A Linguistic Ethnography of Learning to Teach English at ... M Hall... · A Linguistic Ethnography...
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A Linguistic Ethnography of Learning to Teach English at Japanese Junior High Schools James M Hall For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Stirling July, 2017
Transcript of A Linguistic Ethnography of Learning to Teach English at ... M Hall... · A Linguistic Ethnography...
A Linguistic Ethnography of Learning to Teach English at
Japanese Junior High Schools
James M Hall
For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
University of Stirling
July, 2017
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Abstract
The study examined three Japanese junior high-school English teachers’ initial
years of full-time employment. It investigated the type of pedagogical puzzles these
teachers experienced, how their practice developed over 18 months, and my role as a
Teacher of Teachers (TOT). Drawing on linguistic ethnography, this study took an
ethnographic approach to understanding the teachers’ social context and used
techniques from discourse analysis to consider how they interpreted their puzzles and
constructed their practice. These techniques were also used to analyze my working
relationship with the teachers. The purpose of this endeavor was to contribute to the
understanding of novice teacher development in an ‘expanding circle’ country.
Over the course of the study, I observed the teachers’ classes and interviewed them
once or twice a month. Using the coding of interview transcripts and class fieldnotes, I
identified Critical Incidents that represented the teachers’ pedagogical puzzles and
typical practice, as well as my role as a TOT. Using Cultural Historical Activity
Theory(CHAT), I analyzed how elements of the social context brought about the
teachers’ pedagogical puzzles and affected their capacity to address them. Coding of the
interviews and a microanalysis of the interactions showed my role as a TOT.
Overall, the CIs gave an emic portrait of each teacher’s experience and my efforts
to support them. The pedagogical puzzles the teachers faced were a result of their personal
histories and school conditions. These puzzles did not change, which indicates that
teachers will face complex issues that cannot be resolved. Understanding them, however,
can promote teacher development. Applying CHAT, I could identify the conditions that
helped determine the types of pedagogy in which teachers engaged. I tried to fulfill my
role as a TOT by conducting a form of reflective practice (RP). An examination of the
RP I conducted with the teachers challenged the notion that it involves the sequential
steps of identifying issues, attempting to resolve them, and reflecting on one’s efforts.
This dissertation concludes with a discussion about the contributions it has made toward
the field of English teacher development: using CHAT to understand the English teaching
experiences, the development of an understanding of RP as it can be carried out in the
field, an understanding of novice teachers in expanding circle countries, and the value of
linguistic ethnography for researching novice teachers.
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Acknowledgements
First, I would like to express my profound gratitude to the three participants in this
study who sacrificed their valuable time every month to provide me with insights into
their teaching. This whole experience has made me a much better teacher of teachers, and
I owe this entirely to them. Second, I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Fiona Copland,
and my assistant supervisor, Dr. Vander Viana, for their constant encouragement and
guidance. If I had not met Fiona in November, 2011 at the Aston University Booth in the
JALT conference, I likely would not have started a PhD program or been able to do this
study. One of the reasons I decided to do a PhD was that I wanted to develop into a better
researcher. Although I still have much room for improvement, I am grateful to Fiona and
Vander for helping me get this far. Third, on a personal note, I would like to thank my
parents who have been my role models in life. I am particularly indebted to my mother,
Virginia Coleman, for proofreading my paper numerous times. Lastly, I am most indebted
to my wife, Miki, and children Masato, Misaki, and Mina who have all supported and
encouraged me even when working on this thesis took away from our time to spend
together on weekends and vacations. They are a reminder of what the most important
things in life are. It is to them, that I dedicate this work.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 2
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... 3
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ 4
Glossary of Acronyms .................................................................................................... 9
1. Introduction: A Personal Rationale for Researching JHS English Teachers .... 10
2. Theoretical Foundations for Researching Novice English Teachers .................. 15
2.1 Social Constructionism ...................................................................................... 15
2.2 Linguistic Ethnography ..................................................................................... 19
2.3 Sociocultural Theory ......................................................................................... 23
2.4 Relating CHAT to the Research Context ............................................................ 29
2.5 Summary ........................................................................................................... 34
Prologue to Chapters 3 and 4: The Social Context and Development within it ..... 35
3. The Social Context of Novice English Language Teachers in Japan .................. 36
3.1 Subject: The Challenge of the Novice Teacher Experience ................................. 37
3.1.1 How to Become a Teacher in Japan .................................................................. 42
3.1.2 In-service Training............................................................................................ 45
3.2 The Rules/ Norms: Education Culture ............................................................... 46
3.2.1 Compulsory Education and the Course of Study .............................................. 46
3.2.2 Developing the Whole Child in Elementary School and JHS ........................... 47
3.3 Division of Labor: Role of the Teacher ............................................................... 48
3.4 Object: Teaching Communication and Reforms in English Education ................. 50
3.5 Material Tools: The Textbook ........................................................................... 53
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3.6 Summary ........................................................................................................... 55
4. The Process of Teacher Development and its Outcome ........................................ 56
4.1 Uncertainty as a Trigger for Development ......................................................... 57
4.2 Reflective Practice ............................................................................................. 60
4.2.1 A Definition and Rationale for RP ................................................................... 60
4.2.2 Criticisms against RP ........................................................................................ 63
4.2.3 RP for Identifying and Resolving ‘Puzzles’ ....................................................... 67
4.3 Facilitating RP in the Feedback Event ................................................................ 68
4.3.1 The Feedback Event.......................................................................................... 68
4.3.2 Dialogic Talk for Promoting Reflection ............................................................ 69
4.3.3 Managing the Feedback Event .......................................................................... 72
4.3.4 Summary of Facilitating RP .............................................................................. 74
4.4 The Outcome: Development ............................................................................. 75
4.5 Critical Incidents to Encapsulate the Process of Development ............................ 77
5. Methods ..................................................................................................................... 79
5.1 The Participants and Their Recruitment ............................................................ 79
5.2 Data Collection ................................................................................................. 80
5.2.1 Ethnographic Interviews ................................................................................... 81
5.2.2 Interview Data and Data Management ............................................................. 84
5.2.3 Participant Observation of Classrooms ............................................................ 85
5.2.4 Classroom Observation Data and Data Management ...................................... 86
5.2.5 Document Collection ........................................................................................ 92
5.3 Data analysis ..................................................................................................... 92
5.3.1 Phase 1-1: Code and Summarize each Interview .............................................. 93
5.3.2 Phase 1-2: Create a Timeline of Interviews Divided into Periods ................. 100
5.3.3 Phase 1-3: Identify Classroom or Interview Events to Serve as CIs ............... 104
5.3.4 Phase 1-4: Writing and Analyzing the CIs in each Period .............................. 105
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5.3.5 Phase 2: Determine Teacher Development and Influencing Factors ............. 106
5.4 Establishing Trustworthiness ........................................................................... 108
5.5 Ethics .............................................................................................................. 109
5.51 Pre-study Ethical Issues ................................................................................... 109
5.52 Ethical Issues Arising During the Study .......................................................... 111
5.6 Relating the Method to Linguistic Ethnography ............................................... 112
Prologue to the Findings ............................................................................................ 114
6. A Profile of the Teachers and their Community ................................................. 117
6.1 Risa at Tamai Junior High School .................................................................... 118
6.2 Maiko at Shirakawa Junior High School ............................................................ 119
6.3 Yuta at Aoki Junior High School ...................................................................... 121
6.4 James, the TOT ............................................................................................... 122
7. Period 1: We are all novices (October 2013 – March 2014) ............................... 124
7.1 Understanding Risa’s practice and perspectives ................................................ 126
7.1.1 CI 1R Conflicting principles and practice (November 18, 2013) ................... 126
7.1.2 CI 2R Meaningless meaningful content (October 18, 2013) ......................... 134
7.1.3 CI 3R Giving unsolicited advice (October 28, 2013) ..................................... 141
7.1.4 CI 4R Failing to be a Collaborator (December 17, 2013) .............................. 144
7.1.5 CI 5R Understanding Risa’s perspective (January 27, 2014) ......................... 148
7.2 Learning from Maiko ....................................................................................... 153
7.2.1 CI 1M Influences on Maiko’s practice (October 9, 2013) .............................. 154
7.2.2 CI 2M Wrong RP with Maiko (October 22, 2013) ......................................... 159
7.2.3 CI 3M How to work with students (February 17, 2014) ................................ 163
7.3 Empathizing with Yuta .................................................................................... 169
7.3.1 CI 1Y Disconnect with students (October 21, 2013) ..................................... 169
7.3.2 CI 2Y Overwhelmed with advice (November 19, 2013) ................................. 173
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7.3.3 CI 3Y A successful lesson (December 17, 2013) ............................................ 176
7.3.4 CI 4Y A bad class for Yuta (January 29, 2014) ............................................... 183
8. Period 2: A Fresh Start with Risa and Maiko (April to August, 2014) ............. 194
8.1 Risa becomes a novice teacher again ................................................................ 194
8.1.1 CI 6R Slow teaching of grammar (May 9, 2014) ............................................ 197
8.1.2 CI 7R No progress on class management (June 18, 2016) ............................. 205
8.2 Maiko in control .............................................................................................. 208
8.2.1 CI 4M Successful grammar instruction (May 30, 2014) ................................. 208
8.2.2 CI 5M CLT gone too far? (July 7, 2014) ........................................................ 214
9. Period 3: Partnering up (September, 2014 – March, 2015) ................................ 220
9.1 Risa: The Ups and Downs of Teaching 1C ....................................................... 220
9.1.1 CI 8R An agonizing student-demonstration (September 26, 2014) ............... 220
9.1.2 CI 9R Amae boys (September 26, 2014) ........................................................ 225
9.1.3 CI 10R 1C’s speeches go well! (December 12, 2014) ..................................... 228
9.1.4 CI 11R A final perspective (March 6, 2015) ................................................... 238
9.2 Maiko: Preparing for the Open School Conference and its Aftermath ............... 242
9.2.1 CI 6M An attempt at dialogic talk (October 17, 2014) .................................. 245
9.2.2 CI 7M Maiko’s philosophy and style versus James’ failed idea (November 11,
2014) ........................................................................................................................ 255
9.2.3 CI 8R: Recognizing Maiko’s teaching achievement in a performance test ..... 265
10. An Analysis of the Puzzles, Practice and TOT Relationship ............................ 269
10.1 A CHAT Analysis of the Teachers’ Puzzles and Practices ............................... 269
10.1.1 Risa: Exercising agency under contextual limitations ................................... 274
10.1.2 Maiko: Resolving puzzles with a support system .......................................... 289
10.1.3 Yuta: Facing problems at school ................................................................... 299
10.1.4 Conclusion on Puzzles and Practice ............................................................. 308
10.2 RP between the TOT and Teachers ............................................................... 310
10.2.1 The Challenge of Carrying out RP................................................................ 311
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10.2.2 Facilitating Teacher Development through Dialogic RP ............................. 316
10.2.3 Implications for Encouraging RP with Novice Teachers .............................. 322
11. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 324
11.1 Research Question 1: The Pedagogical Puzzles of the Teachers ...................... 324
11.2 Research Question 2: How Teachers’ Practice Developed .............................. 325
11.3 Research Question 3: The Role of the TOT ................................................... 326
11.4 Potential Contributions of this Study ............................................................. 327
11.5 Shortcomings ................................................................................................ 329
11.6 Areas for Further Inquiry ............................................................................... 331
11.7 Last Words .................................................................................................... 331
References.................................................................................................................... 333
Appendix 1: Research Participation Consent Form ............................................... 351
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Glossary of Acronyms
ALT: Assistant Language Teacher
BOE: Board of Education
CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
CHAT: Cultural Historical Activity Theory
CI: Critical Incident
CLT: Communicative Language Teaching
EFL: English as a Foreign Language
ESL: English as a Second Language
ELT: English Language Teaching
SHS: High School
IRF: Initiation Response Feedback
IS: Interactional Sociolinguistics
JHS: Junior High School
JTE: Japanese teacher of English
LA: Linguistic Anthropology
LE: Linguistic Ethnography
L1: First Language
L2: Second Language
MEXT: Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, Sports, and Technology
PPP: Presentation, practice, and production
TBLT: Task-based Language Teaching
TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language
TESL: Teaching English as a Second Language
TOT: Teacher of Teachers
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1. Introduction: A Personal Rationale for Researching JHS English Teachers
With no teaching qualifications or ability in Japanese, I first came to Japan in 1997
on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme as an Assistant Language Teacher
(ALT). I naively assumed that teaching English in Japan would be easy, because everyone
studied it in school and the Japanese had the reputation of being diligent students in the
USA.
My first English classes were a shock. The Japanese Teacher of English (JTE) with
whom I taught spoke English very well but conducted the class mostly in Japanese. Much
of the class was translating the textbook or writing worksheets. I had no idea what they
were talking about, but it reminded me of studying Latin. I wanted to teach, however, and
the JTE would sometimes give me 15 to 20 minutes of class time. I appreciated this, but
most of the activities I planned were too difficult, not appealing to JHS students, or
impossible to complete in the 15-minute time frame. A few times during the year, there
would be regional ALT conferences, which I would use as an opportunity to commiserate
with my fellow ex-pat teachers about what I believed to be the poor quality of English
education in Japan.
Despite the ups and downs of working life, my two years on the JET Programme
became a formative experience in my life. After finishing, I went to graduate school in
the US and then returned to Japan as a Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, Sports,
and Technology (MEXT) university research student. Slowly, I developed into a teacher
with some level of competence. Now, I find myself as an English teacher educator at a
national university in Japan. When I reflect on my experience as an ALT, I realize that
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my poorly conducted activities and my bemoaning the poor state of English teaching
resulted primarily from my inexperience and a lack of understanding of the schools’
educational culture. In addition to the nostalgia I feel about my first two years, I have
always felt a sense of guilt at not being sufficiently prepared for my work.
This thesis is a linguistic ethnographic study of the JHS novice English teacher
experience. Rampton et al. (2004, p. 12) write that many who undertake research in the
field of linguistic ethnography tend to be mature students whose commitments to research
stem more from practical experience than from fascination with academic theory. I fall
into this category. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of
novice English teacher development in an expanding-circle country (Jenkins, 2009). In
this context, English is not an official second language spoken by most people, but rather
a foreign language taught in schools. Because I am based in Japan and have also done
some work in Thailand and Myanmar, my interests lie in expanding circle countries in
Asia.
There are now many documented examples of expanding circle countries enacting
new foreign language education policies so that their citizens become more proficient in
English (Butler, 2011; Littlewood, 2011; Prapaisit de Segovia & Hardison, 2008). In my
experience working in Japan, Thailand, and Myanmar, despite significant economic and
cultural differences among these countries, often teachers do not have the language
proficiency and training to enact these new education policies. Furthermore, such policies
are often incompatible with the schools’ educational culture. It is my belief that an
understanding of the novice English teacher experience can help policy makers,
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administrators, teacher educators, international NPOs, textbook publishers, and other
stakeholders involved in shaping English education develop ecologically-based strategies
for education reform. With this in mind, I began an 18-month study investigating three
junior high school (JHS) novice English teachers’ induction into English teaching in
Japan. The research questions I posed were designed to investigate the issues novice
English teachers experience, how they resolved them, and ways of mentorship. They are:
1. What kind of pedagogical puzzles do the teachers face when teaching English?
2. How do the teachers develop their practice over the span of 18 months? What kind of
environmental factors impact their development?
3. What is the role of the researcher as a Teacher of Teachers (TOT) in helping the
teachers address these puzzles?
Borrowing terminology from Richards (2003), I begin this thesis in Chapter 2 by
describing the paradigm and research tradition upon which this study is based. The
paradigm refers to the basic set of beliefs upon which a study is based, and the research
tradition is a historically recognized approach to research employing an accepted set of
methods, which form the foundation of this study. The paradigm is social constructionism,
which considers human reality to be formed by social interaction and practices. The
research tradition draws on methods usually employed in linguistic ethnography and
sociocultural theory. Like social constructionism, linguistic ethnography (LE) posits that
language and social life are mutually determining (Rampton et al., 2014). Through the
analysis of language (classroom interaction and interview talk) in its context of use (three
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schools in northern Japan) linguistic ethnography can show how language education
culture is both changed and reproduced.
While LE shows how social context is created through language, sociocultural
theory is a theory of mind that recognizes the cognitive and social as interconnected and
mutually determining (Johnson, 2009). Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) may
be considered as an analytical framework within the field of sociocultural theory and may
be used to examine how individuals engage with their physical and social environment in
object-oriented activities, such as trying to conduct communicative language teaching.
In the third chapter, using CHAT as a framework, I give an overview of the different
elements of the social context in which this study occurred. These components consist of
the novice teachers, teacher education, the goal of teaching communicative English and
corresponding reforms. In the fourth chapter I introduce the process of development as I
envisioned it for the teachers in this study: the teachers experience uncertainty in their
teaching and discuss that uncertainty through reflective practice in the post-class
discussion with me. After that, I introduce different models of development to consider
the teachers’ possible development trajectories. Finally, I introduce the concept of Critical
Incidents in the lives of a teacher as a way of encapsulating an event in which a teacher
experiences uncertainty and learns from that experience.
In the fifth chapter, I will discuss how I conducted participant observation and
ethnographic interviews as a means of data collection focusing on the reflexive nature of
the relationship between the teachers and me. Next, I introduce the stages of analysis
which consisted of coding interviews, creating a timeline of events, choosing events to
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serve as critical incidents (CIs), and writing and interpreting the CIs. In this study, a CI
can be considered a particular event that encapsulated the intricacies of one of the research
themes. For example, it could encapsulate a pedagogical challenge (RQ1), a way in which
their pedagogical practice and the environment interacted (RQ2), or the type of working
relationship between the TOT and teacher (RQ3). Finally, at the end of this chapter, I
discuss the ethical issues that arose during the study and how I handled them.
Chapter 6 introduces the three teachers in the study, their schools, and the region.
Chapters 7 to 9 describe the CIs for each teacher. My time with the teachers was divided
into three periods; each chapter shows the CIs for a specific period. The purpose is to give
a thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the pedagogical puzzles, nature of the teachers’
practice, and the type of relationship each shared with the TOT in each period.
In Chapter 10, I make the argument, using CHAT, that each teacher’s puzzles were
a product of their background and teaching circumstances. I then discuss how the teachers
addressed these puzzles and the impact this might have had on their development.
Finally, I describe how, as a TOT, I attempted to engage in a form of reflective practice
with the teachers. In Chapter 11, I conclude this thesis discussing possible contributions,
limitations, and areas for further inquiry.
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2. Theoretical Foundations for Researching Novice English Teachers
Creswell (2007) argues that the process of qualitative inquiry begins not with
methods but rather a worldview and theoretical lens. Therefore, this chapter is devoted to
explaining the paradigm (worldview) and research tradition (theoretical lens) that has
shaped this study. According to Richards (2003), paradigm is the basic set of beliefs upon
which a study is based, and tradition is a disciplinary approach which an inquiry might
take. For this study, the paradigm is social constructionism and the traditions employed
are linguistic ethnography (LE) and sociocultural theory. Social constructionism views
reality as being formed in social practice. LE is a research tradition which captures how
reality is constructed by analyzing situational talk from linguistic and ethnographic
perspectives. Sociocultural theory stipulates that cognitive development is intertwined
with the social context and provides frameworks for examining how an individual’s
interaction with the social and physical environment affects her learning. LE and
sociocultural theory serve as the lenses for looking at how the three participants develop
or do not develop as English teachers in this study as well as my own development as a
TOT. The remainder of this chapter examines the paradigm or beliefs on which this study
is based and then the research traditions followed.
2.1 Social Constructionism
Social constructionism views reality as local and specific (Lincoln & Guba, 2000).
To apply this to education, in their study of classrooms as complex adaptive systems
Burns and Knox (2011) describe the teacher as
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a person playing a social role in a particular time and place… the
playing of that role means that certain social and cognitive factors
(e.g., language learning experience, teaching experience) come to the
fore as the teacher interacts with other factors in the classroom, such
as students, researchers, and the physical environment. (p.16)
Therefore, the knowledge that any teacher generates in any situation will, in a sense,
be specific to that particular teacher, in that particular context. Providing a more concise
definition of social constructionism other than, “reality is viewed as being socially
formulated,” can be problematic. Burr (2015) writes that there is no single definition for
social constructionism which can adequately fit all the studies that fall into this paradigm.
According to the Handbook of Constructionist Research (Holstein & Gubrium, 2008)
constructionist research can be carried out in such disciplines as discourse analysis,
ethnography, and ethnomethodology. Instead of giving a definition, Burr (2015, pp. 2-4)
provides four assumptions of which constructionist research accepts one or more:
① A critical stance toward taken-for-granted-knowledge: Skepticism that our
observations of the world can objectively yield its nature to us.
② Historical and cultural specificity: The ways in which we understand the world,
or the categories we use to describe it, are historically and culturally specific.
③ Knowledge is sustained by social processes: Knowledge does not originate from
the nature of the world but is created through social interactions between people
in the course of daily life.
④ Knowledge and social action go together: Different social constructions of
events warrant different social actions. For example, if alcoholism is viewed as a
disease, alcoholics will be offered treatment. If drinking alcohol is viewed as a
crime, those who drink will be punished.
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If social constructionism indeed posits that “human beings do not find or discover
knowledge so much as [they] construct or make it” (Schwandt, 2000, p. 197), does that
mean that knowledge is nothing more than subjective perception? Social constructionism
is criticized for debunking other theories rather than building up its own (Weinberg, 2008).
There seems to be a contradiction in the paradigm: questioning the existence of
knowledge is in direct contradiction to the fundamental purpose of research, generating
new knowledge.
This dilemma can be seen in what Denzin (1997) called the representational crisis
of modern qualitative research, or the “fourth moment.” In the period to which Denzin
refers, the legitimacy, authority, and conventionality of modern ethnographic accounts
were questioned (Atkinson et al., 2003). It was recognized that qualitative research could
capture the perspectives of people but could not objectively reveal the truth about a group
of people as the existence of truth itself was questioned. By 2000, this had led to the
dawning of what Lincoln and Denzin (2000) termed the “seventh moment,” in which
qualitative research would 1) continue to have breaks and ruptures, 2) continue to move
away from grand narratives and overarching paradigms, 3) continue to take a performance
turn in prose (stories, poems, etc.), and 4) continue to become a place for critical
conversations on such social issues as race, gender, and nation. However, Atkinson et al.
(1999) took issue with this construction and argued that qualitative research did not
simply transform from being modernist to postmodernist and that crises in representation
have always existed.
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Regardless of whether the crisis of representation is a new or continuing
phenomenon, there seems currently to be confusion as to what qualitative research is
attempting to achieve. Denzin (2008, p. 321) argued the need for a consensus on what
constitutes research:
We cannot allow the new positivist, SBR [Scientific Based Research]
camp to claim control over the word science, just as we must reclaim
control over what we mean by research.
In post-qualitative research, Greene (2013) argued that the push to reject so-called
traditional methods and the rejection of knowledge as something that can be captured has
led to significant confusion:
Neither the research process nor what is experienced or learned in the
research is fixed or bounded, but rather they are fleeting and fluid,
propelled by lines of flight, resisting stasis and capture. (P.753)
I take the epistemological stance that knowledge does exist, and it is created by
people’s interaction within a specific social environment. Both knowledge and the
process in which it is created may be elucidated. This study focuses on the experiences
that impacted both how the novice English teachers and I understood English teaching.
Elucidating these experiences can provide insight into the processes affecting other
English teachers’ understanding of their profession and professional growth.
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2.2 Linguistic Ethnography
This section discusses linguistic ethnography (LE) as a research process for revealing
the meaning that people attach to teaching English. It gives an overview of LE and then
discusses why it is an appropriate research tradition for this study.
Social constructionism and LE share the basic ontology that people’s social reality is
created by “sense making practices” (Hammersley, 2007, p. 691), and LE offers a way to
understand how these practices are carried out in situated language use. LE is broadly
defined as an area that “combines ethnographic and linguistic methodologies to study
language use in a range of settings” (Maybin & Trusting, 2011, p. 515). According to
Rampton (2007), LE is a methodology that “puts linguistics and ethnography together to
find the social processes that we are involved in” (p.599).
Social processes in educational settings are a common area of focus for LE. LE has
been used to investigate how students construct their ethnic identities, how relationships
of power and inequality are maintained, and how in-school and out-of-school cultures
interact (Maybin & Trusting, 2011). A more concrete example in the field of English
language teaching is Copland’s research on EFL teacher feedback conferences (Copland,
2008, 2011, 2012). She has shown how discourse practices enable participants’ voices to
be heard or silenced and how face-threatening acts stay within or go beyond socially
acceptable norms. According to Perez-Milans (2015), LE sees human beings as “engaged
agentively in daily activities while at the same time reproducing the conditions that make
these conditions possible” (p.3). In simple terms, this means that people create any given
social situation through their interaction. This interaction both shapes and is shaped by
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larger societal norms. This can be seen in Copland’s research as she analyzed how actors
in the feedback event behaved, relating this behavior to general norms of accepting and
giving feedback. Her work shows how in LE, the micro and macro are seen as mutually
constitutive.
LE takes an interdisciplinary approach (Shaw et al., 2015) to unveil the micro and
macro processes that construct a social system. It incorporates such disciplines as Critical
Discourse Analysis, neo-Vygotskyan research, Applied Linguistics for ELT, Interactional
Sociolinguistics, and New Literacy Studies (Rampton et al., 2004). LE shares similarities
with Linguistic Anthropology (LA) and Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS) in stipulating
that (i) contexts of communication should be investigated rather than assumed and (ii)
meaning is more than just an expression of ideas but rather signals the biography,
identifications, and nuances of communication emanating from the interlocutor (Rampton,
2007). LE distinguishes itself from LA and IS in that its creation was based on
circumstances unique to Europe (Shaw et al., 2015); it is associated with the movement
of Poststructuralism in the Social Sciences (Creese, 2008), which views language in use
as contextual rather than referential, and it draws on different analyses of discourse such
as Conversation Analysis (Copland & Creese, 2015).
LE has several merits as a research tradition for this study. First, it has been used to
research familiar surroundings, contrasting with the “traditional anthropological concern
of trying to understand the other” (Hammersley, 2007, p. 689). Second, the grounding in
disciplines such as neo-Vygotskyan research and Applied Linguistics in ELT is relevant
to a study of language teachers learning Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)
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in their particular environment. Third, the poststructuralist foundation of LE rejects
comprehensive and prescriptive ideological frames focusing instead on “identifying
meanings that are context specific and that relate to the varying discursive practices
operating” (Fawcett, 2008, p. 666). This focus on how people create their own meanings
of a particular event relates to the constructionist perspective of this study. Finally, the
ethnographic element of LE acknowledges reflexivity.
Reflexivity can be considered the impact the researcher has on the subject and vice-
versa (Edge, 2011). The notion of reflexivity is prevalent in the broader field of
ethnography and is thus discussed from the perspectives of both LE and ethnography.
According to Rampton et al., (2015, p. 17), the researcher’s presence in the field “defies
standardization and introduces a range of contingencies and partialities that really need
to be addressed and reported.” Davies (2008) writes about two types of reflexivity,
reactivity and radical flexibility. In the former, the researcher and reciprocators are
engaged in co-constructing the world together. Therefore, ethnographers are helping to
construct the observations that become part of the data. In the latter, results of social
research are constructed from and reflect both the sociocultural context of researchers and
the disciplinary culture to which they belong. These two concepts show that, in some
fashion, knowledge is intertwined with the actions or background of the person who
claims to have produced it.
Reflexivity, therefore, encompasses more than knowledge co-construction. Coffey
(1999) argues that because ethnographers are part of the field they are investigating, the
pursuit of cultural understanding and the process of personal development are intimately
22
related. Accordingly, “ethnographic research can problematize and force a
reconceptualization of the self, which goes beyond the narrow confines of the research
itself” (Coffey, 1999, p. 24). The change in ethnographers as they themselves become
part of the field arguably gives them the insider perspective which ethnography strives
for (Blommaert, 2007).
Atkinson et al. (2003) argue that although it is necessary to recognize that we
ourselves are part of the study, that does not mean that the self becomes the sole focus of
fieldwork. We do not want to “lose sight of the ethnographic imperative that we are
seeking to understand and make sense of complex social worlds, of which we are only
part” (Atkinson et al., 2003, p. 57).
Overall, I take a reflexive stance in recognizing that I am part of the field, and one
of my research questions examines the impact of my relationship with the teachers.
Although I am part of the context and my growth is documented, the primary focus of the
study is the social world of the novice English teachers.
So far, I have highlighted how LE uses situated language use to discern the micro
and macro factors behind social constructive processes and the role of reflexivity in the
research process. In the next section, I discuss sociocultural theory as a means to tease
out both micro and macro aspects of the social context as well as the interaction of the
research participants with this social context.
23
2.3 Sociocultural Theory
In this section, I briefly explain sociocultural theory and then cultural historical
activity theory (CHAT), which will be used as a framework not only to analyze the
findings but also to explain the social context of the study.
It has long been recognized that teachers do not teach using the methodologies they
were taught in their university education courses (Lortie, 1975). Two decades ago, writing
on current trends in TESOL for TESOL Quarterly, Johnson (1996) stated that the
following is known about learning to teach. First, what teachers know about teaching is
not a collection of facts and theories but is rather what they experienced as learners.
Second, learning to teach is a socially constructed activity that requires interpretation and
negotiation within the classrooms where teachers teach. Third, developing into a teacher
is a complex process that is learned through participating in social practices related to
teaching and learning such as professional development seminars, discussion with
colleagues, etc. Thus, learning to teach is not the equivalent of learning and applying
theory but rather is a “process of co-constructing knowledge that is situated in and
emerges out of participation in particular sociocultural practices and contexts” (Johnson,
2015, p. 516). Sociocultural theory has become a common approach in investigating the
complexity of teacher learning (Feiman-Nemser, 2008). It is defined by Johnson (2009)
as a theory of mind that recognizes the inherent interconnectedness of the cognitive and
social. In other words, sociocultural theory is a social constructionist ontology that
recognizes knowledge is created in situated social practices, and offers a framework to
explain how people learn as they engage with their social environment.
24
The key concept of sociocultural theory relevant to this study is Vygotsky’s concept
of mediation. Figure 2.3.1 shows the mediate nature of human-world relationships.
Lantolf and Thorne (2006, p. 79) define mediation as “the process by which humans
deploy culturally constructed artifacts, concepts, and activities to regulate (i.e. gain
voluntary control over and transform) the material world or their own and each other’s
social and mental activity.” In sociocultural theory, human cognition is shaped by
engagement in a goal-oriented activity (Engeström, 1999b). The subject can be
considered the “protagonist of the activity” and the object “its motivating force” (Daniels,
2001, p. 16).
When carrying out goal-oriented endeavor, the subject will use physical tools,
symbolic artifacts such as concepts, or activity, i.e. some kind of social interaction. These
are “the auxiliary means by which interactions between subject and object are mediated”
(Daniels, 2001, p. 16). To illustrate, Vygotsky (1978) provides an example of a child
Figure 2.3.1. The mediate/nature of human world relationships
25
learning the act of pointing. At first, the child might want an object and grasp for it to no
avail. The child’s parent might recognize what her son is attempting to do and hand the
object to him. If this situation repeats itself, through his mother’s reaction to the
movement, the child understands his grasping movement as pointing. According to
Vygotsky (1978, p. 56), the child’s action will become a true gesture when
it objectively manifests all the functions of pointing for others and is
understood by others as such a gesture. Its meaning and functions are
created at first by an objective situation and then by people who
surround the child.
The objective situation to which Vygotsky refers is the act of reaching for the object.
Through the mediation of activity, or social interaction, and the use of the pointing gesture,
or concept, the child is able to accomplish the objective. This kind of process supports
Vygotsky’s (1960/1997, cited in Johnson & Golombek, 2011) assertion that “any kind of
mental function was external and social before internal.” According to Engeström (2001),
Vygotsky’s concept of mediation was revolutionary because it overcame the Cartesian
divide between the individual and society: “The individual could no longer be understood
without his or her cultural means; and the society could no longer be understood without
the agency of individuals who use and produce artifacts” (p.134). In other words,
Vygostky considered the individual and the surrounding environment to be mutually
shaping.
26
Vygotsky’s theory of mediation is recognized as the first generation of cultural
historical activity theory (CHAT) (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). The second generation of
CHAT is attributed to Leontyev (1978). While the first generation focused on individual
action, Leontyev extended it to describe collective activity. Leontyev never expanded on
Vygotsky’s original model, however. In the third generation of CHAT, shown in Figure
2.3.2, Engeström (2001) expanded on Vygostky’s original model and extended the
developmental research applications in which “the investigator often takes a participatory
and interventionist role in the participants’ activity to help participants experience change”
(Yamagata-Lynch, 2010, p. 23).
Describing CHAT in a clear and concise manner is a formidable challenge. Foot
(2014) takes it on and explains that the term activity in CHAT “refers to what people do
together” (p.341). This activity is modified by cultural and historical artifacts which
convey its situatedness. In general, I believe that the best way to describe CHAT is as a
means of connecting human activities with “their context of enactment” (van Lier, 2004,
p. 211). Sannino et al. (2009) note that an important difference between Vygotsky’s
mediation and CHAT is that the former does not go beyond the situation in which the
learning occurs while the latter “conceptualizes actions in the broader perspective of their
systematic and motivational context and, thus, aims at going beyond a given situation”
(p.3). CHAT can be used to examine how macro and micro contextual elements impact a
person’s endeavor such as teaching. The framework also enables the researcher to
compare different teachers in different situations engaged in the same endeavor. By
helping to elucidate the ideal or mitigating factors for accomplishing a certain endeavor
27
across contexts, CHAT can be used to make suppositions about the applicability of these
findings beyond the immediate content. Figure 2.3.2 shows the different components of
CHAT.
The subject refers to a person or group “whose agency is chosen as the point of view
of the analysis” (van Lier, 2004, p. 211). According to Yamagata-Lynch (2010, p. 17),
although there is debate about the exact nature of object among CHAT scholars, there is
a consensus that it represents the “reason why individuals and groups of individuals
choose to participate in the activity”. The act of trying to reach the objective will lead to
some kind of outcome. The other categories can be thought of as the social, situational,
and material factors that mediate the subject’s action. Rules can be defined as “a socially
agreed upon set of behavioral guidelines in an action or activity that can be either implicit
or explicit” (Swain et al., 2011, p. 152). Community refers to the people involved in the
activity. Division of labor refers to the roles that the subject carries out compared to those
Figure 2.3.2 Diagram of CHAT*
*Downloaded from http://www.educationthatworks.net/activity-theory.html
28
of other members in the community. Instruments are the material and symbolic artifacts
which mediate the action.
CHAT has been used to research and improve professional practice in such fields as
education (Freeman, 2016), hospital administration (Engeström, 2001), and social work
(Foot, 2014). It does this by making the cultural historical conditions of the activity
explicit. Some of the conditions of the system might conflict, which can prevent the
subject from achieving the object. For example, Ahn (2011), using CHAT, researched
how a teacher (the subject), in Korea was attempting to implement English language
education reforms (the object). One of the many contradictions that was impeding her
progress was the different attitudes she and her school community had about L2 language
use in the classroom. Such contradictions, however, can represent opportunities for
personal growth and improvement of the social environment if the subject recognizes
them and tries to improve the conditions to alleviate the contradiction.
In discussing learning under CHAT, Engeström (1999b) recommends that
development be reconceptualized as 1) a partially destructive rejection of the old, 2)
collective transformation instead of individual transformation, and 3) horizontal
movement along borders rather than vertical movement across levels. Engeström calls
horizontal movement the reconceptualization of the different viewpoints and approaches
in the activity system. By moving across borders, people change how they perceive a
social system and thus enter a new realm of awareness. This notion of horizontal
movement across borders offers promise for this study in that recognizing contradictions
in the English teaching social context of Japan can possibly lead to a new realm of
29
awareness that can help us make changes to the system.
2.4 Relating CHAT to the Research Context
To finish this chapter, I apply the CHAT model to the research context of this study
and use Well’s (2002) assumptions about CHAT to show how it can be applied to
understand the development of the teachers. Figure 2.4.1 shows two activity systems;
mine and that of the novice teachers. This study consists of three novice teachers and the
researcher, who regards himself as a TOT. I worked individually with each teacher,
observing their lessons and interviewing them beforehand or afterward. Wells (2002) uses
the CHAT model to describe how learning takes place in classroom interaction between
teacher and learner. Because interaction between the novice teachers and me was
supposed to promote the learning of teaching, I found the basic tenets written by Wells
(2002) to be a good framework for the activity with which the teachers and I were
involved. Below, I will use these tenets to explain our learning while referencing Figure
2.4.1, below. (All the below tenets are quoted from Wells, 2002, p. 3).
Tenet 1: Learning and purposeful collaborative activity serves as
both the context and impetus for the interactions by which learning
and growth occur.
For the teachers, the object of the activity system was teaching communicative
English to JHS students. For me, it was to help the teachers do this as well as write this
thesis. This thesis concerns teaching communicative English. The teachers’ effort to teach
30
communicatively and my effort to facilitate this was the collaborative activity which
served as the reason for and the context of our interactions.
Tenet 2: Because new learning is built on a person’s prior experience,
individuals construct different meanings from the same event.
We each approached the object of teaching communicatively from different
backgrounds (subject): I was a US-born university teacher educator schooled in
Figure 2.4.1. The Activity Systems of the Novice Teacher and TOT
31
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approaches to language teaching while the
participants spoke English as an L2 and had a different kind of schooling in ELT. Because
I speak Japanese, we could converse in either their L2 or L1. It is also worth noting that
we experienced classroom events with a different division of labor. I observed classes
and provided feedback to the teacher with no responsibility for overseeing students’
learning or welfare. The teachers were preoccupied with teaching a quality class and
looking after the well-being of the students.
The teachers and I were working under the same rules/ norms established by the
school, the education culture of Japan, and national education policy. However, I was
also operating under the norms of a researcher in that my job was also to learn about the
teacher using valid procedures in the field. Our community included some of the same
people such as the Board of Education (BOE). However, our relationship was different;
I was a university professor at a similar status with the teachers’ counselors from the BOE
in the social hierarchy of local educators. Although we followed the same rules/norms,
our different backgrounds, standings, and division of labor made it likely that we would
interpret the mutually experienced classroom events differently
Tenet 3: Activities are uniquely situated in space and time and are
mediated by the cultural resources or the material and semiotic [tools]
available.
The material and conceptual tools that the teachers and I shared were the textbook
and the goals of the Course of Study (national curriculum) respectively. The teachers’
32
guides for the textbooks belonging to the teachers and the methodology books I
referenced for my own teaching were material tools that we did not share. As our ELT
backgrounds differed, so did our every-day concepts or notions about teaching and
learning, developed through experience. Additionally, our scientific concepts or
academic concepts of language learning and teaching such as CLT, etc. differed. Each
time I watched the teachers’ classes, it was under different circumstances depending on
the characteristics and mood of the class, the time of the year, the content of the lesson,
etc. It should be noted that since my role was to provide feedback and be someone the
teacher could share ideas with as a TOT, I served as a social tool for the teacher.
Tenet 4: Meaning making is a fundamental aspect of all activity, it
mediates the participants’ actions and gives rise to semiotic artifacts
which can be used as resources in future activity.
Tenet 4 can be interpreted to mean that the process of my trying and the teachers
trying to make sense of teaching English communicatively will trigger in our minds new
concepts on this issue. These new concepts will serve as references in further teaching.
Tenet 5: Learning can be conceptualized as appropriating and
personally transforming the knowledge and skills enacted in
activities, and developing the dispositions to use these resources
responsibly and effectively to contribute to further projects.
According to Tenet 5, this ability to transform our knowledge and make use of it in
future endeavors can be considered learning. Likely, teaching communicatively will
33
conflict with aspects of the education culture, for example, the expectations of the
students and parents, as well as the teacher’s own beliefs. Additionally, with our different
backgrounds and roles, our concepts of teaching communicatively might also differ.
However, according to Lantolf and Thorne (2006), it is the contradictions within and
between activity systems that drive development. It was my hope that the successful
resolution of these contradictions in trying to teach communicatively would promote
development of both the novice teacher and researcher. In this case, I consider
development to be the ability to transform and improve ourselves and the social context.
This has been written as the outcome.
Tenet 6: Learning necessitates the assistance of other participants
who both demonstrate the skills involved in the activity and help
direct the learner toward independent mastery.
The teachers and I arguably had different skills to share with one another. They knew
the ‘rules of the game’ (or 'doxa' in Bourdieu, 1977) for teaching at their schools. I was
knowledgeable about the English language or more academic-oriented topics. In theory,
then, our skills were complementary and we could assist each other: they about their
schools and me with English language teaching methods with which they might not be
familiar.
34
2.5 Summary
I have shown that most of the knowledge generated from this study comes from
situated interaction between the researcher and teachers. Before that, I showed that this
study takes a social constructionist approach to the interpretation of reality and has
employed a research tradition that focuses on the micro and macro elements of social
processes which constitute human reality. This tradition also acknowledges the role of
the researcher in mutually creating knowledge with the participants. In the next chapter,
I present the research context from this epistemological perspective.
35
Prologue to Chapters 3 and 4: The Social Context and Development within it
The aims of the next two chapters are first to provide an overview of the social
context in which the teachers of this study work, and second to elucidate the process of
development these teachers might undergo and possible outcomes of this development.
According to Blommaert and Dong (2010), one of the main tasks during fieldwork
preparation for ethnography is to “understand and study the possible contexts in which
your object will occur” (p.19). The CHAT chart in Figure P1 shows the micro and macro
social contexts in which the activity, teaching CLT, occurs. Chapter 3 describes the
subject, rules/norms, division of labor, object and material tools of the social context.
Chapter 4 describes the process of development; how the teachers might experience
Figure P1 The social context, development within it, and Critical Incidents to capture it
36
uncertainty and how reflective practice in the feedback event can be used to understand
this uncertainty. It will also describe the outcome of this object-oriented action;
transformation of the teacher and TOT. Finally, it will introduce Critical Incidents as a
way to peer into this complex process.
3. The Social Context of Novice English Language Teachers in Japan
In this chapter, the subject is presented on two macro levels: the novice teacher
experience in general and the novice teacher experience in Japan. The latter will
incorporate how to become a teacher and in-service development opportunities. The
teachers themselves are introduced in Chapter 6. The rules/norms represent the culture of
education. This includes compulsory education, or all students being required by law to
complete JHS, the Course of Study1, or the national curriculum, the major role of JHSs,
developing the whole child, and the unique characteristics of JHS. For division of labor,
I will discuss the roles that teachers should assume. Next, I discuss the object-oriented
action of most novice English teachers in Japan, teaching students to communicate in
English. This includes discussion of education reforms and the reception of CLT by
Japanese JHSs. I then introduce the material tools which will serve as a resource for the
subject of the activity. In this case, it is the English textbook. The social tools are
reflective practice and mentorship. They will be discussed under the process of
development. The community consists of the three schools and their members as well as
the city in which they work. They are discussed when the teachers are introduced in
Chapter 6.
1 In chapter 2, the Course of Study was presented as a semiotic tool. It can be both a tool
and a norm/rule. This will be explained in Chapter 9.
37
3.1 Subject: The Challenge of the Novice Teacher Experience
Teaching is one of few occupations in which first-year members are expected to
perform the “same tasks as a 25-year veteran” (Lortie, 1975, p. 72). In his study of a
novice English teacher in Singapore, Farrell (2003) wrote that the teacher’s transition
from university to the school classroom was a “reality shock” (p.95). It has also been my
experience that graduates of my teacher education program have found themselves
overwhelmed in their first year. Teacher cognition research indicates that the first year of
teaching is equivalent to what Huberman (1992) refers to as the “Survival and Discovery”
stage (e.g. Borg, 2006; Farrell, 2009; Kanno & Stuart, 2011). In this stage, novice teachers
experience the thrill of having their own classes and designing their own syllabi. However,
it can also be chaotic. Generally, teachers are preoccupied with their own teaching as they
prioritize class control over student learning (Farrell, 2009; Kagan, 1992). In their study
of how novice teachers conduct a reading lesson, Richards et al. (1998) found that the
novice teachers’ objectives were to finish the text within the class period, and they made
no attempts to link the reading text with broader curricular goals. This finding supports
the notion that novice teachers tend to prioritize short-term concerns over long-term goals
for student learning.
Interestingly, empirical research as well as teacher testimonials have found teacher
education to be of little help in preparing pre-service teachers for their profession (Farrell,
2008; Kagan, 1992; Kubanyiova, 2012; Takahashi, 2011). Previous research indicates
that novice teachers usually teach as they were taught rather than adopt techniques they
learned in their teacher education programs (e.g. Borg, 2004; Griffin, 2003; Lortie, 1975;
Richards & Pennington, 1998). Thus, novice teachers are adopting behaviors that are
largely unanalyzed but that intuitively feel right. According to M. Borg (2004, p. 275),
38
the limited effect of teacher education coupled with novice teachers reverting to their
default model of teaching can exert a conservative pressure on the profession.
“Teaching as they are taught,” however, cannot alone explain the teaching style of
novices. Sato (2002) writes that in his first year teaching in a Japanese high school, he
was pressured to use the textbook more and his own materials less to ensure that his
students scored well on English exams. Doing so was contrary to how he wanted to teach.
Britzman (1986) writes how the structure of the school itself can mold novice teachers.
She lists the following three characteristics of a school’s structure: 1. social control is a
significant dynamic in classroom life; 2. curriculum is compartmentally organized; 3.
schools are hierarchically organized. To elaborate on each of these points: students expect
the teacher to be an authority in the classroom regardless of how the teacher feels; the
curriculum, which is specialized and designed by another party, dictates what the teacher
should prioritize, and teachers have superiors who might dictate how they should teach.
Another element of the novice teacher experience is the formation of a professional
identity (e.g. Johnson & Golombek, 2016; Varghese et al., 2005). Identity has been
defined by Miller (2009) as a way of being in the classroom which is affected by context.
Beauchamp and Thomas (2009) describe teacher identity as both a product, a result of
influences on the teacher such as prior learning experiences, and a process, or a form of
ongoing development through a teacher’s interaction with the context. If novice teachers
do not have clear images of themselves as teachers, they might “be doomed to flounder”
(Kagan, 1992, p. 156). Flores and Day (2006, p. 220) write that a sense of professional
identity will contribute to a teacher’s self-efficacy, motivation, commitment and job
satisfaction and is therefore a key factor in becoming an effective teacher.
39
In short, many novice teachers start their careers unprepared for the rigors of their
profession and rely on their own experience as students as well as contextual pressures to
inform their practice. In addition, novice teachers tend to focus on their own teaching
rather than student learning, and their priority is controlling their classes. Finally, the
identity of teachers is constantly evolving and the transition of novice teachers’ identities
to that of a “professional teacher” is essential for their development.
As Farrell (2016a) writes, novice teachers enter the job far from a finished product
and have to work on several more dimensions of learning to teach before they can teach
effectively. Without support, novice teachers will likely flounder and not develop the
professional identity necessary for their development. Statistics on teacher attrition rates
show how difficult it can be for novice teachers to acclimatize to their new profession. A
report in the Weekly Osaka Nichinichi Newspaper showed that the education ‘industry’
in Japan had the third worst attrition rate of workers in their first three years at 48.5%
("Complaints of Teachers", 2014). Overwork as well as personal relations issues with
parents, coworkers, and individual students were given as reasons. Frequent mental
breakdowns of overwhelmed novice teachers (Didakutika, 2012) and even suicide
(Kudomi & Sato, 2010) have been documented in Japan.
Despite problems faced by novice teachers inside and outside Japan, there are also
many cases of their achieving success in their first years which tend to be overlooked
(Ulvik et al., 2009). For example, two studies of novice teachers in the U.S.A. (Kanno &
Stuart, 2011; Numrich, 1996) and testimonies of novice English teachers in Japan
(Deguchi, 2011; Iwamura, 2008) portray novice teachers as being preoccupied with
student learning, carrying out measures to facilitate it, and achieving some success.
Furthermore, Edge and Mann (2013) provide numerous practical papers on innovations
40
in teacher education which help pre-service teachers develop skills which are
immediately transferable to teaching.
In my own experience, some student-teachers who have studied in my program have
had a relatively smooth transition to their new profession. For example, in 2013 and 2014,
I coordinated a symposium on novice English teacher education at a national conference
in Japan. The novice teacher panelist in 2013, Rie, and the panelist in 2014, Ryohei were
both former students of mine and did not participate in this study
In the 2013 symposium, Rie shared her principles of CLT as a pre-service and
second-year teacher (Hall, 2014b). This is shown in Figure 3.1.1. Before becoming a
teacher, Rie believed that CLT should use fun activities to promote student fluency and
interaction. After becoming a teacher, Rie experienced problems with her methodology
and therefore added new elements to her original concept of CLT. She emphasized
accuracy, small steps to aid students’ participation, encouragement of all-student
involvement, and building student and classroom character. For these activities to be
successful, she believed that communicative situations should be not only meaningful but
also real. A “real situation” is one that meets the unique needs and interests of the students.
Figure 3.1.1 Rie’s image of CLT before and after becoming a teacher (Hall, 2014b, p. 133)
41
This interpretation is similar to the notion of authenticity in content which is emphasized
in CLT (Brown, 2007).
In the 2014 symposium, Ryohei talked about his formative principles for conducting
CLT (Takahashi, 2014). Ryohei said that his original teaching philosophy was to show
students the joy of communicating in English. His concept of CLT, like Rie’s, became
more concrete in the first half of his first year. Based on advice from a mentoring teacher,
Ryohei made explicit the rules for conducting communicative activities. They were
(Takahashi, 2014, p. 237):
誰でもやる (Speak with anybody)
恥ずかしがらない (Don’t be shy)
他人の発音を笑わない (Don’t laugh at other people’s pronunciation)
英語のみで会話する (Only use English)
These positive examples show that, although the novice teacher experience can be
one of some uncertainty, there are many cases of teachers who can handle and even thrive
in the adversity. These two teachers showed that they could be pragmatic, creative, and
realistic in their situations. They also demonstrated self-efficacy, or a belief in their
capacity to handle the duties of their job. This, according to Mercer et al. (2016), is one
of the deciding factors in teacher well-being.
42
3.1.1 How to Become a Teacher in Japan
Above, I have discussed the rigors of the first year of teaching, and how some
teachers succeed and others struggle. Here, I explore how JHS English teachers in Japan
are prepared for their jobs. Table 3.1.1 shows the types of secondary school English
teacher licenses and their requisite class credits (adapted from MEXT, 2014b).
Most English teachers receive a normal license, which qualifies them to teach at
either a JHS or senior high school (SHS). Advanced licenses enable the teachers to teach
at a JHS or SHS with higher pay. A teacher with a secondary license may only teach at
JHS. Specialized subject classes are subject-specific courses and include literature,
linguistics, international culture, and language skill. One class is two credits and consists
of sixteen 90-minute periods (classes usually meet once a week for 16 weeks), which
amounts to 45 hours. Students must take a total of 20 credits or 10 classes in a specialized
subject, which amounts to 450 hours of class. Classes in teacher education encompass
subjects such as educational psychology and educational history. Students must take 4
English teaching methodology classes for 8 credits (90 hours) out of the 31 required in
the teacher education classes. Credit for a teaching practicum also falls under teacher
education classes. This lasts for two to four weeks, depending on whether students are
Table 3.1.1 Types of Secondary School English Teacher Licenses and Required Class Credits*
License
Type
Required
Degree
Specialized
Subject
Teacher
Education
General Education
or Specialized
Other Total
Advanced
License Masters 20 31 32 8 91
Normal
License Bachelors 20 31 8 8 67
Secondary
License Jr. College 10 21 4 8 43
43
getting a secondary or normal license.2 Ishida (2011) offers a criticism of this system.
Although the names of the courses and number of required credits are the same across
Japan, there is no standard for what should be taught in the classes or how is should be
evaluated.
JHS teachers are hired primarily on the basis of test performance, and there is fierce
competition to pass these tests. Nationally, one of every 7.4 applicants passed the JHS
English teacher’s test for the 2014 fiscal year (MEXT, 2014a). All prefectures3 have their
own employment examination. In the prefecture for this study, one of 7.8 applicants
passed the English teacher’s test for the 2015 fiscal year (Tokyo Academy, n.d.). There
are two screenings for this test. The first screening is conducted over two days. On the
first day, examinees take three tests: the first is one hour long and covers educational law
and psychology; the second is 80 minutes long and is an essay about a current issue in
education, and the third is a two-hour test related to the examinee’s subject. For the
English subject, this test includes an English proficiency test equivalent to Pre-first in the
Eiken test. Eiken is an English proficiency test produced in Japan and the pre-1 level is
equivalent to an ‘Independent User’ or the B2 level of Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages (CEFR) scale 4 . In addition, there is a section which tests
2 Often, undergraduate students will get a normal license in one subject and a secondary
license in another subject.
3 A prefecture is equivalent to a “county” in the UK.
4 The Council of Europe gives the following can-do descriptions for someone at the B2
level: “Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics,
including technical discussions in his/her field of specialisation. Can interact with a degree
of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible
without strain for either party. Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects
and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of
various options”(n.d., p.24).
44
examinees’ knowledge of the Course of Study (National Curriculum) for Foreign
Languages. It should be noted that any questions about English teaching and learning
reference what is written in the Course of Study. In the prefecture in which this study took
place, there were no questions about theory on English teaching and learning outside the
Course of Study. On the second day of the first screening, examinees have an interview
in English and a do a mini-lesson. For the 2015 fiscal year in the prefecture of this study,
23 of 93 examinees passed the first screening (Tokyo Academy, n.d.).
For the second screening, examinees must conduct a demonstration class and then
participate in group discussion in which they talk about educational topics in Japanese.
In the demonstration class, they are asked to teach a page of the JHS textbook. They are
shown the page and given 20 minutes to prepare for a 15-minute mock lesson. In the
interview examinees are asked to discuss current issues in education. In the 2015 fiscal
year, 12 of 23 examinees from the prefecture of this study passed the second screening
(Tokyo Academy, n.d.). Akiyama (2013) has raised concerns about the extent to which
microteaching can be evaluated reliably and argued for clearer, more transparent criteria
given the high stakes of the examination. On a personal note, I can vouch for the lack of
clarity of the criteria for the demonstration class and interview in the second screening.
Over the years, I have helped examinees prepare for the second test and have known
students who failed even though they could teach any page of the JHS textbook.5
The reason I explain the teacher’s test in such detail is that it is arguably the most
important event in the pre-service teaching period; it is a high stakes test for which
5 It is important to note that student-teachers can receive their licenses even if they fail or
do not take the test. With a license, they can work as part-time teachers after graduating
from university and take the test again if they desire full-time employment.
45
candidates spend almost a year preparing, and test performance rather than university
class performance determines employment. To pass the test, examinees need to show an
understanding of educational law, theory, and psychology, the ability to write about
current topics in education in a logical manner, proficiency in English, understanding of
the Course of Study in both English and Japanese, and the ability to teach any page in the
textbook on demand. Notably, the exam does not have questions about teaching
methodologies or any kind of mainstream EFL instructional theory. As explained earlier,
the only questions about English teaching concern the Course of Study. This underscores
the importance of the Course of Study in English language teaching in secondary schools.
3.1.2 In-service Training
Under a mentoring system called shoninsha kenshu, a mentor teacher is assigned to
observe each first-year teacher’s class twice a week and to give the teacher guidance. In
addition, the teacher must participate in periodic training sessions at the Board of
Education (BOE), receive visits and guidance from prefectural teacher instructors, and
conduct one open class attended by other teachers. Arguably most of the teachers’
learning about English education will come through guidance from their mentors, the
BOE, working with colleagues, and experience.
46
3.2 The Rules/ Norms: Education Culture
The rules/norms under which teachers work are exemplified by compulsory
education and the notion of developing the whole child, and the gap between elementary
school and JHS.
3.2.1 Compulsory Education and the Course of Study
The Japanese school system is a 6-3-3 structure, meaning students have six years of
elementary school, three years of JHS, and three years of SHS. Education in Japan is
compulsory from the first grade of elementary school to the third year of JHS (gimu
kyouiku). Under this system, students are guaranteed to advance grades until they have
finished JHS regardless of their academic performance. Compulsory education was
established after the Second World War through the Basic Act in Education in 1947,
which gave equality of educational opportunity to everyone. According to Article 5 of the
Basic Act in Education, the objectives of compulsory education
shall be to cultivate the foundations for an independent life within
society while developing the abilities of each individual, and to foster
the basic qualities necessary for those who form our state and society.
(MEXT, n.d-a)
Article 5 further stipulates that the national and local governments assume
responsibility for the implementation of compulsory education. Thus it is required by law
that schools follow the Course of Study, or the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports,
Culture and Technology (MEXT) approved curriculum for all subjects (Stevenson, 2002).
Furthermore, by law, all textbooks must be authorized by MEXT to be sold to schools.
Any textbook which does not follow the Course of Study will be rejected. According to
47
Azuma (2002), even though most teachers do not read the Course of Study in detail,
MEXT is able to control the nationwide curricular content through the textbook approval
process. Most teachers, however, have read it at some point because it is part of the
teacher’s test.
The centralization of education in Japan ensures that JHS teachers throughout the
country will be teaching the same or similar content with similar objectives. This equity
of education was one factor that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD, 2010) provided to explain Japan’s high score on international
student assessment tests. However, the Course of Study was modified in 1998 to
encourage schools to address the needs of individual students rather than teach standard
content. Stevenson (2002) introduces ways that teachers individualize instruction such as
assigning seat work during class and helping individual students, peer instruction,
supplementary handouts for the textbook, and homework in which students review
previous lessons and prepare for the next lessons based on their own needs. Students also
have supplemental education options such as juku, special private schools which offer
lessons during after-school hours. One contradiction that teachers in this study faced was
the need to meet national standards while responding to the needs of individual students.
3.2.2 Developing the Whole Child in Elementary School and JHS
Lewis (1995) remarks that Japan’s Course of Study not only includes goals related
to skills but also goals related to children’s feelings and motivations. For example, one of
the goals for foreign language learning in JHS is “to foster a positive attitude to attempt
communication” (MEXT, 2012, p. 1). The purpose of schools, then, is more than
developing skills. According to a handbook for aspiring teachers, schools are
48
organizations with the purpose of “forming character” (Nakasato, 2005, p. 11). Although
there are nation-wide standards for English learning such as the Ministry of Education
can-do list (MEXT, 2013), the goal of subject learning is secondary to that of socialization
(Fukuzawa, 1998; Hill, 1996).
The nature of socialization in elementary school and JHS, however, is different.
Slater (2010) sums up the difference well in his study on how students’ place in society
is decided in JHS. Group living (shuudan seikatsu) serves as a foundation for primary
school and early JHS. Individual goals are secondary to collective goals such as a
homeroom trying to win an inner-school choral competition or scoring well on an
achievement test – both of which I encountered during the fieldwork for this study.
Achieving these goals, “requires hard work, dedication and sacrifice, but also offers a
place of secure membership, warm acceptance, and [emotional involvement]” (Slater,
2010, p. 7). However, as children approach the later years of JHS, priority is given to an
individual goal: passing the entrance exam to enter the high school of their choice. The
type of high school one enters can influence one’s lifelong occupational track. Those
students who can make this shift meet success. In this study, preoccupation with academic
achievement was evident in two schools and affected the ways in which students
participated in class.
3.3 Division of Labor: Role of the Teacher
Society’s perceptions of teachers are also important to understanding the meaning
of being a school teacher in Japan. Kimura (2008, p. 140) writes that the following
characteristics of teachers in Japan have remained true from the establishment of modern
schools in 1870 to today (my translation):
49
Social status: They are valued highly in society.
Professional disposition: Although they strive to have a rich human
nature and to develop a high level of skill and knowledge, it is their
human nature6 on which they place most importance.
Attitude toward work: Teachers devote themselves completely to
understanding their profession.7
The difficulty of the employment examination, as described in Section 3.12 is
indicative of the high status of teachers in Japan, as is the fact that the teaching profession
is a relatively well paid and stable occupation. In addition, teachers are given the
prestigious title of sensei, a term also used for doctors, lawyers, artists, politicians,
clergymen, or anyone, “who has the authority of experience, the mastery of basics and
form” (Rohlen & LeTendre, 1998, p. 373). Furthermore, in my experience teachers are
often addressed as sensei outside of school even by people who are not affiliated with the
school. Therefore, the title sensei enjoys a higher status than that of “teacher” used in the
Western world.
Teachers are classified as civil servants, which means that their job is to serve society
(Nakasato, 2005). The term seishoku or “sacred profession” is often used to describe a
teacher’s work. In fact, teachers’ duties to take care of their students often take precedence
over their duties towards their own children. For example, three years ago, there was a
national uproar when an SHS homeroom teacher did not attend her school’s entrance
ceremony to attend the entrance ceremony of her own child. A prefectural politician in
attendance, Kochi Eno, criticized her on his Facebook page, expressing his anger at the
6 The original Japanese for human nature was ningensei. Another possible translation is
“humanity.”
7 I interpret this to mean that teachers devote themselves to mastering all aspects of their
work.
50
teacher for neglecting her students who were coming to school “full of expectations and
dreams” ("A high school teacher", 2014). Although there were a significant number of
people who supported the teacher’s decision, the strong criticism shows the expectations
much of society places on the role of teachers in their students’ lives.
Although sensei indicates one is a “master” in her area, the duties described so far
have been unrelated to subject mastery. Sato and Kleinsasser (2004) note that teachers’
class performance is often not regarded as highly as their other duties by school
administrators. These other duties can consist of morning and afternoon homeroom
activities, supervising students’ cleaning of the school, supervising school lunch, work
on various committees (e.g. class year grade committees (gakunen iinkai), school
management committees, etc.), guidance counseling, life guidance to students,
administrative work (such as writing class reports and newsletters), and managing or
coaching clubs (Kamiesu, 2005).
This study focuses on the English teaching of three novice teachers. However, this
section shows that teaching one’s subject is just one and arguably not the main duty of a
teacher. Overall, a holistic look at teachers’ development in the classroom would also
take into account their duties as members of a ‘sacred profession.’
3.4 Object: Teaching Communication and Reforms in English Education
In this section, I discuss the commonality between CLT and the current Course of
Study as well as how CLT-minded reforms have been received by Japanese schools. The
point is to show that, in principle, the objectives behind CLT and those of the Course of
Study are similar. Teachers are expected to accomplish these objectives through
individualized instruction.
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The overall objectives of the Course of Study for all foreign languages are:
To deepen the understanding of languages and cultures through
foreign language learning; to foster a positive attitude to attempt
communication; and to develop basic communication abilities in
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. (MEXT, 2012, p. 1)
The objectives for learning English are:
(1) To develop an ability to understand the speaker’s intentions, etc.
expressed orally in simple English.
(2) To develop an ability to talk about one’s thoughts, etc. in simple
English.
(3) To familiarize students with reading in English and develop an ability
to understand the writer’s intentions, etc. expressed in simple English.
(4) To familiarize students with writing in English and develop an ability
to write about their thoughts, etc. in simple English. (MEXT, 2012,
p. 1)
To my knowledge, the term CLT has not been used in MEXT documents.
Nevertheless, there seem to be parallels between CLT and the Course of Study. CLT is a
set of principles whose goal is for students to learn to communicate in the foreign
language rather than a concrete set of methods or techniques for the teacher to enact
(Littlewood, 2011). A weak version of CLT can accommodate a range of instructional
techniques as long as the goal is for students to learn to communicate in the language.
The Course of Study seems to be in accordance with the main principle of CLT, which
stipulates that the aim of language learning is to learn to communicate rather than to learn
fragments of language. Therefore, it is my belief that the Course of Study may be
considered as a weak version of CLT.
52
Official English language education policy made communicative competence a goal
in its Course of Study in 1989. Since then, the changes that have been enacted to
accomplish this goal include introducing listening into national university entrance
examinations, implementing weekly English activities for 5th and 6th year elementary
school students, and, in 2013, mandating that JHS English classes be taught mostly in
English and SHS English classes be taught exclusively in English. Although it might seem
from the foregoing that communication is prioritized in English education, its
appropriateness for Japan continues to be debated.
A number of academics have written critically of introducing English in elementary
school (Yamada, 2005; Yamada et al., 2009) and teaching classes exclusively in English
(Narita, 2013; Otsu et al., 2013). They argue that acquiring a foreign language is more
than just a skill and being highly literate in the L1 is also a necessary condition of
mastering an L2. Early L2 education, thus, can detract from L1 education. Regarding
English as a medium of instruction, they argue that L1 use is essential to help students
understand the grammatical rules of the L2.
Debate about whether to make English education more communicative is not new;
in fact, it began during the Meiji Era8 (Torikae, 2014). However, many studies of English
classes in Japanese secondary schools indicate that CLT movements have had little effect
on classroom practices (Aspinall, 2013; Gorsuch, 2000; Nishino, 2011; Sakui, 2004; Sato
& Kleinsasser, 2004; Underwood, 2012). In my experience, novice JHS and SHS English
teachers in Japan often begin their careers with the ambition to teach communicative
English. However, many of them soon abandon this ideal. According to Nagamine (2014),
CLT was originally conceived by western academics to address issues in foreign language
8 The Meiji Era was from 1868 to 1912
53
instruction in their particular contexts. Therefore, CLT as practiced in the West is not
appropriate for Japanese schools.
A danger in assuming that CLT is the right approach is that homegrown pedagogical
styles in the expanding circle “look anachronistic if not ineffective and irrational”
(Canagarajah, 1999, p. 106). According to Kumaravadivelu (2009) and Nagamine (2014)
among others, we are now in a post-methodological era that recognizes that best practices
can be informed by theory but are locally constructed. Therefore, although the object of
the English education activity system, per Japanese education policy, is teaching
communicative English, this study assumes that teachers will and should try to
accomplish this goals in a way appropriate to their contexts.
3.5 Material Tools: The Textbook
As mentioned earlier, JHS textbooks are written according to the Course of Study.
Currently, there are a total of six textbooks approved for JHSs in Japan. Textbooks can
be chosen at the prefectural, regional, or municipal level. According to Richards (2014),
the textbook is the primary teaching resource for many of the world’s teachers. It
determines students’ activities, class goals, and content. Whether textbooks benefit or
inhibit classroom instruction has been debated by researchers in the field of material
development. Tomlinson (2011) summarizes the views of both the proponents and
opponents. Proponents argue that the textbook can provide the learner with security, a
learning system, progress, and revision. Additionally, it can save time for the teachers and
support their lessons. Opponents argue that textbooks might also have a disempowering
effect by not taking into account the particular needs of the teachers and learners in a
54
certain context. Littlejohn (2011) calls materials a pedagogical device, which can be an
aid to teach and to learn a foreign language.
The textbook used by the teachers in this study was called Sunshine (Kairyudo,
2011a). According to the publisher’s outline of the textbook (Kairyudo, 2012), its
objective is to have learners acquire communication skills through using the language.
Grammar is taught in a presentation, practice, and production style, and there are three
projects in the textbook in which learners use their English knowledge to complete a task.
The prefecture in which this study took place set passing the 3rd level of the Eiken Test as
the goal for JHS English. Level 3 is equivalent to A1, or Basic User9, on the CEFR scale.
Accordingly, in theory, if students faithfully complete their JHS textbook, they will be
equivalent to an A1 user of English.
In 2015, I served as the co-researcher in a small study on how two veteran JHS
teachers utilized Sunshine (Fekete & Hall, 2015). We found that, in principle, the textbook
was compatible with a CLT approach. Class observations and interviews revealed that
the teachers adapted and supplemented the textbook to address student interests or
weaknesses. One teacher said that when she tried carrying out the lesson plans in the
teacher’s guide they were not well-received by the students and added that she chose not
to use these kinds of supporting materials because “it would not be her class” (Fekete &
9 According to the Council of Europe (n.d, p. 24), a Basic User can “understand and use
familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a
concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions
about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she
has. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is
prepared to help.”
55
Hall, 2015, p. 249). This experience suggests that the novice teachers in this study will
also have to learn to use the textbook as a resource rather than a pedagogic directive.
3.6 Summary
Previous research indicates that local context has the greatest impact on how teachers
conduct their instruction (Britzman, 1986; Nishino, 2012a). So far, I have described
primarily the macro characteristics of this study’s context using an activity system
framework. I have introduced the subject, the novice teacher who is learning to teach on
the job in an uncertain environment. The motivational force, or object, behind the
teacher’s classroom teaching action is teaching English communicatively. I have shown
that the English education curriculum in Japan may be conceptualized as a weak CLT
approach. However, the division of labor and rules/norms show that teachers have other
responsibilities, such as guiding students, which might supersede the importance of
raising students’ communicative abilities. Finally, apart from knowledge of the Course of
Study, student-teachers are generally not evaluated on disciplinary knowledge of teaching
English as a foreign language on the written employment test.10
10 This was the case of the prefecture where this study was conducted and other prefectures
where my students have taken employment exams. However, there could be prefectures
which serve as exceptions.
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4. The Process of Teacher Development and its Outcome
Process, which appears in the middle of Figure P1 in the Prologue to Chapters 3 and
4, shows how I envisioned the teachers’ development during the fieldwork. Teachers
would experience some uncertainties about their teaching. In the feedback event or post-
class conference, the teacher and I would discuss these uncertainties through my efforts
to promote reflective practice. The uncertainties, I thought, would result from a conflict
among different elements of the activity system. I hoped that the Outcome of resolving
the uncertainties in the feedback event would be advancement of the development of both
the teachers and me.
Because the primary focus of this study is teacher development with TOT
development considered its byproduct, I will focus on the former. As a threshold matter,
the term teacher development requires definition. In reviewing the literature on the topic,
Evans (2002) writes that there is still not a consensus on a definition for it. In a more
recent work, Kubanyiova (2012) showed that there was not even a consensus on the name
of the construct. Other terms used to describe teacher development are: ‘teacher learning’,
‘teacher socialization’, and ‘teacher improvement’ (Kubanyiova, 2012). Britzman (2007)
argues that teacher development is often misconstrued as progressing from immaturity to
maturity or moving from a state of ignorance to knowledge. Citing the psychoanalyst
Wilfred Bion, she argues, “Learning means understanding that knowledge does not
exhaust what is unknowable, that we act from not understanding” (Britzman, 2007, p. 9).
Teachers should therefore become researchers of their own practice and have the skills to
investigate it (Walsh, 2013). In this study, I consider teacher development to be the effect
of the efforts teachers make to improve their instruction and learn their profession. This
study takes a sociocultural perspective on development in that change in the teachers (and
57
TOT) will not only be influenced by the social context and personal histories but will also
transform the very same social context and rewrite the personal histories of the
protagonists themselves.
4.1 Uncertainty as a Trigger for Development
Kolb (1984) in his theory of experiential learning describes learning as an holistic
process of adaptation to the world. The idea of learning, he says, “is by its very nature a
tension- and conflict-filled process” (Kolb, 1984, p. 30). In fields such as sociocultural
theory, the engagement in some kind of cognitive struggle is considered essential for
learning (Engeström, 1999b; Johnson & Golombek, 2011). This concept may also be
applied to learning to teach. Studies on teacher development and development in other
professions show that it is this uncertainty that can spark development. Novices in
education experience ‘contradictions’ (Golombek & Doran, 2014), ‘bumpy moments’
(Romano, 2006), or moments of ‘cognitive or emotional tensions’ (Kubanyiova, 2012).
How they come to understand and resolve these issues will affect their professional
trajectory. In this section, I describe the types of uncertainty experienced by novice
teachers and the role it plays in their development.
Uncertainty arises when teachers experience conflicts between different conditions
in their social context. Examples include conflicts between teachers’ pedagogical beliefs
and those of the community (Ahn, 2011), between teachers’ beliefs about teaching and
institutionally preferred practices (Tsui, 2007), between teachers’ self-perceptions and
conventional perceptions of teachers (Kanno & Stuart, 2011), between teachers’
competing communities of practice (Nishino, 2012b), and between teachers’ prior beliefs
and experiences and their teacher education class content (Farrell, 2006). In this study,
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uncertainty describes a situation in which a teacher experiences a tension arising from
instructional or class management conundrums, conflicting elements of the social context,
conflicts arising between the teacher and school expectation, or internal struggles.
The uncertainty novice teachers feel can trigger their own development. Johnson
(2006) uses the theory of situated cognition to describe the kind of knowledge which can
bring about effective practice. Knowledge, she says, “entails lived practices, not just
accumulated information, and the processes of learning are negotiated with people in what
they do, through experiences in the social practices associated with particular activities”
(Johnson, 2006, p. 238). She concluded that learning is not the appropriation of skills but
rather the movement from external, socially mediated activity to internal control.
To give a real-world example, four teacher-learners in one of my classes were
preparing for a team-teaching lesson at a local elementary school. They demonstrated
their lesson to me beforehand, and we soon realized that they would have about 15
minutes extra if they performed the lesson as it was. They asked me for an idea, and I
demonstrated an activity called leap frog11. While I demonstrated the activity, the teacher-
learners assumed the roles of elementary-school students. The demonstration gave them
an understanding of how the activity might work for them in the particular situation of
revising previously learned language in a primary school lesson. After that, they
incorporated the activity into their lesson successfully and it was added to their repertoire
of ways to conduct review of language at elementary schools. The uncertainty that the
student-teachers experienced in the planning stage triggered the necessity to expand their
teaching repertoire.
11 See the Genki English website, http://genkienglish.net/leapfrog.htm
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The above example shows the situated nature of teacher learning. In that case, a
moment of uncertainty helped teachers resolve a potential classroom problem before it
happened. Arguably, though, much of teacher learning happens after negative
experiences in the classroom. Golombek and Doran (2014) provide an example of a
teacher realizing that by asking too many display questions in class he was not able to
fulfill his ideal of promoting authentic communication. He recognized this weakness and
improved upon it later. Strong negative emotions can have indexical value, indicating
areas where improvement is necessary (Golombek and Doran, 2014).
Negative emotions can also manifest themselves in novice teachers’ relationships
with others. Day et al. (2006) show that pupils’ attitudes toward teachers can impact
teachers’ identities: teachers who experience poor relationships with students tend to view
themselves as inadequate in their contributions to the school while those who enjoy good
relationships have positive perceptions about their contributions.
Much of the uncertainty teachers feel is about themselves. Learning to teach is more
than learning and applying suitable teaching techniques. Teachers’ instruction reflects
their personal history (Farrell, 2016b). Hargreaves and Fullan (1992) write that changes
in teachers’ behavior are interwoven with changes in the teacher as a person. Singh and
Richards (2006) argue that internal struggles and dilemmas, which all teachers inevitably
experience, will challenge them to develop new identities and change their mindsets.
Whether teachers enact the agency to remake themselves will determine if they engage
with or resist new ideas.
According to Priestley et al. (2015), agency is “not something that people can have or
possess but rather something that people do or achieve” (p.22). Agency is informed by
both previous professional and personal experience, is oriented toward the future in some
60
amalgamation of shorter and longer-term goals, and is enacted by the teacher using what
is available in the social context.
Uncertainty will be a constant companion of the novice teacher, including the teachers
in this study. By exercising their agency to resolve this uncertainty, it is hoped that
teachers will transform themselves and their environment. In the following section, I
discuss the interventions which are aimed at promoting teacher agency: reflective practice
in the feedback event.
4.2 Reflective Practice
Reflective practice (RP) was one way that the teachers in this study and I explored
their efforts to teach a weak form of CLT at their schools. Here, I define and present a
rationale for RP. Next, I describe different levels of RP, after which, I discuss some
criticisms RP has received and ways these criticisms can be addressed. Finally, I discuss
the type of RP I attempted to take.
4.2.1 A Definition and Rationale for RP
Reflective practice is a means of helping teachers make sense of teaching. According
to Moon (2004), RP began in nursing and teacher education but is now applied across
various professions. RP constitutes the use of conscious deliberation in professional
situations which are ill-structured or unpredictable.
Reflective practice originated from a crisis in professional knowledge in which
people questioned the usefulness of scientific knowledge, or technical rationality, for
professionals (Schön, 1983). Although models of reflection, such as Dewey’s (1910), had
been proposed much earlier, Schön (1983, 1987) can be credited with making those
involved in teacher education aware that a teacher’s expertise involves more than
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technical rationality, or applying theory. Rather, it involves thinking on one’s feet and
learning from experience (Zeichner, 2008). Schön (1983) introduces two kinds of
reflection: “reflection in action” which occurs when practitioners are engaged in their
craft, and reflection-on-action, which may be considered “after the event reflection”
(Lengeling, 2013, p. 69).
What teachers learn in their teacher education programs is often not seen as helpful
(Craig, 2008) and much of teacher learning is actually done on the job, which is
conceptualized as the craft model. Shimahara (2002, p. 25) describes a craft model of
teaching as being “derived from the shared repertoire of practice [among teachers], rather
than from research and academic scholarship.” In his much-cited study on the career
cycles of teachers, Huberman (1992) argues that much learning involves informal trial
and error or “tinkering” in the classroom. He advocates a craft model for development
and a school culture which will encourage teachers to develop their craft knowledge.
RP can best be thought of as a way to reconcile craft knowledge with theoretical
knowledge. From this idea that a teacher’s professional knowledge is a combination of
self-discovered technical and contextual knowledge has come a variety of teacher
education books devoted to RP in EFL inside and outside Japan (an inexhaustive list is
Malderez & Wedell, 2007; Richards & Farrell, 2011; Takahashi, 2011; Wallace, 1991;
Yoshida et al., 2009). Although the ways and means of RP can differ, the fundamental
process of reflection, according to Copeland and Birmingham (1993), consists of
identifying problems, generating solutions, and testing solutions. In the field of TEFL,
Farrell (2007) describes it as “teachers systematically gathering data about their teaching
and using this information to make informed decisions about their practice” (pp.12-13).
The process of reflection can thus be considered a systematic way of conducting the
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‘tinkering’ recommended by Huberman (1992) which incorporates both reflection-in-
action and reflection-on-action. Kubanyiova (2012), in her research on teacher
development, has argued that RP is critical for teacher growth as all teachers encounter
situations which they must resolve.
In RP the meaning of classroom events can be discussed at levels ranging from micro
to macro. Farrell (2015) offers one such scheme for describing these levels: descriptive,
comparative, and critical reflection. Descriptive reflection refers to teachers describing
what they do and how they do it. Teachers can analyze their own teaching behaviors or
students’ classroom behaviors. Through descriptive reflection, teachers can gauge
whether there is a difference between their own beliefs and their actual teaching or a gap
between their teaching and students’ learning. Furthermore, describing what the teacher
is doing, what the learners are doing, and the result, can help teachers understand how
they engage with students and the results of this engagement. Scarino (2014) calls the
engagement between learners and teachers ‘reciprocal meaning making’ and awareness
of this can help teachers understand how learning happens in that particular context. A
deep understanding of the context followed by appropriate pedagogical decisions is likely
to bear better results than a simple application of ‘best-practice.’
In the second level, comparative reflection, teachers conceptualize their own
practice and compare it to what others do. According to Jay and Johnson (2002, p. 78),
this involves “thinking about the matter for reflection from a number of different frames
or perspectives” (p.78), and, according to Farrell (2015), questioning one’s own values
and beliefs. Watzke (2007) writes that so-called contemporary approaches in foreign
language pedagogy such as CLT can develop into personalized concepts or pedagogical
content knowledge, “through a process of teaching, conflict, reflection, and resolution”
63
(p.74). Therefore, this kind of reflection enables teachers to develop their own teaching
practice based on their own personal history and the practices of others.
The third level, critical reflection, refers to going beyond practice to consider “the
relationship between knowledge, society, school, and learners” (Edwards et al., 2002, p.
125). According to Brookfield (1995, p. 8), reflection is critical when it attempts to:
1) understand how considerations of power undergird, frame, and
distort educational processes and interactions.
2) question assumptions and practices that seem to make our teaching
lives easier but actually work against our own best long-term interests.
In summary, while the first two levels of reflection involve understanding one’s
context and teaching concepts better, the third level, critical reflection, involves looking
at the every-day in a different way. Thinking about teaching on these levels can fulfill the
following two purposes12 of RP described by Farrell (2015, p. 13): teachers 1) “develop
their own individual theories of TESOL,” and, 2) “allow for any correction of distortions
and errors in beliefs related to practice so that [they] can recognize and discontinue
practices not in the best interests of their students.”
4.2.2 Criticisms against RP
RP as currently conducted has also been the subject of substantial criticism. The
criticisms can be categorized as follows: 1) RP as enacted often deviates from RP as it
was originally conceived; 2) the feasibility of RP itself; 3) the methodology of RP.
12 He describes 10 purposes, but I have chosen the two which I deemed most relevant to this
study.
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Zeichner (2008) provides four ways in which RP has deviated from the original
theory and therefore has failed to make improvements to teaching. The first way is its
adherence to technical rationality. Zeichner (2008) argues that universities which conduct
RP see theory as residing within the university and practice residing within schools. The
problem is then “merely framed as transferring or applying theories from the university
to classroom practice” (Zeichner, 2008, p. 4). This deviates from the original notion of
“an epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some
practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value
conflict” (Schön, 1983, p. 49).
The second reason for the deviation also resides in the persistence of technical
rationality. According to Zeichner (2008), reflection on teaching is often limited to the
analysis of teaching skills and strategies, or the means of instruction, and does not include
the ends of education and the moral and ethical aspects. Accordingly, “Teachers are
denied the opportunity to do anything but fine tune and adjust the means for
accomplishing ends determined by others. Teaching becomes merely a technical activity”
(Zeichner, 2008, p. 4).
A third way that RP can differ from its fundamental principles is that it focuses
teachers’ reflections inwardly on themselves and their students and disregards the social
conditions that influence the teacher’s instruction inside the classroom. Therefore, an
element of critical reflection as articulated by Brookfield (1995) is missing.
The last reason why reflective teaching can fail to promote development is that it
focuses on facilitating reflection of individual teachers who think alone rather than
promote reflection “as a social practice that takes place with communities of teachers who
support and sustain each other’s growth” (Zeichner, 2008, p. 4). Brookfield (1995), and
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in the field of TESOL, Farrell (2007) and Mann and Walsh (2017) among others
emphasize that RP should be conducted collaboratively with colleagues.
Overall, when RP as practiced deviates from its original premises, it can result in
teachers becoming self-focused practitioners of an agreed curriculum rather than truly
reflective practitioners who are looking out for the best interests of the students.
The second criticism is the feasibility of RP. Copland and Mann (2010) argue that
reflection does not come naturally to novice teachers and they must be guided on what to
reflect about. Furthermore, “they do not always seem able (or willing) to go through the
process of reflection, lacking either the skills or the desire to carry it out” (Copland &
Mann, 2010, p. 179). Critical reflection, in particular can be difficult for novice teachers’
who are “initially coping with craft concerns” (Tom, 1987, p. 16). Griffin (2003), in a
study on pre-service teacher journal writing for RP, found that few of the teachers’ entries
could be labeled as considering ethical, moral, or political issues in their teaching
experiences. In my experience as a teacher-educator, novice teacher reflection has
focused on understanding the students as well as learning which techniques work rather
than the larger implications of instruction (Hall, 2013, 2014b).
A bigger issue than the level of reflection is the feasibility of novice teachers to be
able to conduct reflection at any level in their busy professional lives. According to van
Manen (1991), novice teachers are taught by their professors that a reflective orientation
is important. In reality, though, these teachers will be interacting with children constantly
throughout the day and have scarce opportunity for reflection.
Van Manen (2008) recognizes the role of reflective action in enabling us “to know
what we are about when we act,” and converting “action that is merely appetitive, blind,
and impulsive into intelligent action” (p.6). However, he questions why we should
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“demand everything a teacher does requires critical reflection, reasons, or justifications”
(van Manen, 2008, p. 20). If teachers must always doubt everything they do, this might
prevent them from acting thoughtfully and self-confidently.
A final criticism covers the methodology in which teachers analyze their practice in
RP. Mann and Walsh (2013) argue that, although RP has a central place in professional
education, it is bloated and filled with inconsistencies. They state that RP cannot perform
its purpose of helping teachers make sense of their environment for the following reasons:
1) it is insufficiently data led, 2) it heavily focuses on the individual rather than on
collaborative options, 3) it is dominated by written forms of reflection such as journal
writing, and 4) the nature and purpose of reflective tools need to be improved (Mann &
Walsh, 2017).
Regarding the first criticism, they argue that pre-service teachers are often required
to write down their thoughts without providing any kind of basis, which can become
perfunctory and stifle real reflection. To remedy this, they propose that RP become more
data led. That is, practitioners make use of recorded data and transcripts for analysis.
Recorded data and transcripts, they argue, can provide points to reflect on as well as serve
as evidence to support decisions and hypotheses.
Regarding the second and third criticism, Walsh and Mann (2017) argue that RP is
often a solitary endeavor. However, “if we wish to develop, understand or improve in any
aspect of our lives, one of the first steps is usually to talk about it” (Mann & Walsh, 2013,
p. 304). To make RP more collaborative, they recommend dialogic RP which enables
developing teachers to express their current understanding, experience forms of inquiry
conducted by competent practitioners to resolve quandaries, and to make links between
theory and specific cases. Dialogic RP will be discussed in the next section about
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mentorship. In their last criticism, Walsh and Mann (2015) question the effectiveness of
reflective tools. They argue that RP tools are often standardized when they should be
flexible.
4.2.3 RP for Identifying and Resolving ‘Puzzles’
Up until now, RP has been introduced as a systematic way of identifying and
resolving problems in teaching. The ‘puzzle’ metaphor has had a major impact on how I
have conceived of RP for this study. The term ‘puzzle’ is used in Exploratory Practice, a
kind of teacher-led inquiry, to represent a “concern for developing understandings in
relation to issues of immediate interest” (Allwright & Hanks, 2009, p. 176). It does not
matter whether or not these issues are problematic or connected to theory. Exploratory
Practice involves both teachers and students and operates on the premise that
understanding puzzles will improve both parties’ understanding of the teaching and
learning process and thus improve classroom life.
Throughout this study, I use the term puzzle to refer to an issue the teacher is
experiencing. Often, the issue could be considered problematic because novice teachers’
immediate concerns will likely involve an uncertainty they experience as they learn their
craft. I also did not consider it necessary for students to be explicitly involved in the
process of identifying and understanding puzzles. Even though my concept of puzzles
deviated from that of Exploratory Practice (Hanks, 2017), I decided to use the term.
Problematic issues are something a teacher can learn from, and ‘puzzle’ puts problematic
issues in a more positive light.
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4.3 Facilitating RP in the Feedback Event
This section will attempt to elucidate the ways to facilitate RP in the feedback event.
First, I will give an overview of the feedback event and traditional roles assumed by
supervisor and trainee13. After that, I will discuss dialogic talk as a means for encouraging
RP. Lastly, I will return to the issue of managing the feedback event referencing Edge’s
(2011) framework on how different roles assumed by participants can promote different
workstyles. This section will serve as a framework to later examine how I managed the
feedback events with the teachers in Chapter 10.
It should be noted that the term ‘feedback event’ will be used interchangeably with
the terms ‘post-class conference’ and ‘discussion.’ In all three, the objective was to
encourage the teachers to discuss their teaching and provide timely advice, if necessary.
4.3.1 The Feedback Event
According to Copland (2008), the feedback event has two purposes, to: 1) talk about
what happened and 2) provide trainees with feedback. She observed the following phases
of the feedback event during her research on supervisor and student-teacher post class
conferences in an ESL teaching certificate program in the UK (Copland, 2008): Phase 1:
Self-evaluation, Phase 2: Questioning, Phase 3: Trainer feedback, Phase 4: Peer feedback,
Phase 5: Summary. In a later publication, Copland (2011) indicated that each phase has
its own ‘rules of the game,’ a metaphor she uses to describe the verbal behaviors that all
participants should follow.
13 The words supervisor, teacher-educator, and trainer will also be used to describe a
TOT. The terms used to describe a supervisor vary depending on the research cited, and I
have therefore decided to use the original expressions used in the particular studies I cite.
Furthermore, teacher-trainee, student-teacher, teacher-learner, and novice teacher will be
used to reference whoever is undergoing the supervision in the post-class conference.
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One important ‘rule of the game’ is the management of authority. According to
Copland (2012), authority lies with the trainer who has the power to self-select, interrupt,
and nominate who will speak. Furthermore, Copland (2011) writes that in the trainer
feedback stage, both the supervisor and trainee expect and accept that negative feedback
will be given. Copland found, however, that this negative feedback is usually mitigated
or hedged by the trainer. In cases where negative feedback is unmitigated, Copland (2011)
observed that the trainee can become defensive. Hooton (2008), in her study on the
feedback event, indicates that negative feedback is longer and more detailed than positive
feedback. From this, we can extrapolate that, although the feedback event is supposed to
provide teacher-learners with the opportunity to reflect, authority of the supervisor is
ever-present and all participants expect and accept detailed negative feedback from the
supervisor. Negative feedback, though, is usually hedged and not direct.
4.3.2 Dialogic Talk for Promoting Reflection
Having written the reality of the feedback event, I will describe how to encourage
teacher reflection under this reality. Dialogic talk was discussed as a way to facilitate
teacher conversation in the post-class conference. Copland and Mann (2010), drawing on
Alexander (2005) describe dialogic talk as teachers being “engaged in collective,
reciprocal, supportive, and purposeful talk in order to co-construct knowledge” (2010, p.
176). Later, they elaborate that it can be used when there are no right answers and the
primary purpose is for the “development of intellectual tools to reflect on these issues”
(Copland & Mann, 2010, p. 177).
The notion of the teacher and supervisor collaboratively constructing knowledge
contradicts the traditional roles assumed by supervisors and teachers in the feedback event.
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Therefore, it can be assumed that both teachers and supervisors might struggle with
dialogic talk. For example, in their study of interaction between tutors and student-
teachers, Hyland and Lo (2006) found that, although tutors wanted their feedback to be
non-directive and exploratory, they failed. Chick (2015) attributes this kind of failure to
the culture of the feedback event in which the trainer is expected to give advice to trainees
that will enhance their practice. Copland and Mann (2010) argue, however, that the
supervisor should not ignore these expectations. Supervisors should give direct feedback
while giving trainees the chance to participate in structured reflection to develop their
thinking skills. They call this a “balanced approach” (p.17).
Based on Rueda (1998), Bailey (2006) provides five principles from sociocultural
theory to guide supervisors in providing feedback to promote teacher development. I
believe that these could inform the type of ‘balanced approach’ recommended by Copland
and Mann. In a sociocultural approach to supervision, the trainer encourages the teacher’s
autonomous reflection through providing scaffolding and timely advice. In providing the
principles below, I am citing the original source.
The first principle is, “Facilitate learning and development through joint productive
activity among leaders and participants” (Rueda, 1998, para. 5). Arguably this principle
is dialogic talk itself. Citing previous research, Rueda (1998, para. 6) argues that “learning
takes place when novices and experts work together to solve a common problem or
produce a common product.” The following four principles provide ways in which
supervisors can scaffold the collaboration between trainees and mentors.
The second principle is “Promote learners' expertise in professionally relevant
discourse” (Rueda, 1998, para. 8). Learning the discourse of the discipline is an essential
part of professional development. Thinking, according to Rueda (1998), takes place
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through the medium of language. Scientific concepts, or professional discourse, allow
learners to conceptualize problems or occurrences under a professional lens. Golombek
and Doran (2014, p. 104) write that “[w]hen novice teachers begin to use scientific
concepts as psychological tools […] they can problem-solve the particulars of their own
instructional contexts and begin to transform their instructional activity.”
The third principle is, “Contextualize teaching, learning, and joint productive
activity in the experiences and skills of participants” (Rueda, 1998, para. 10). According
to Rueda (1998), a premise of sociocultural theory is that teaching and learning activities
must focus on authentic issues or problems encountered in the trainees’ everyday
practices. Post-class conferences will automatically provide a so-called authentic issue.
Arguably, the challenge is to relate the here and now to broader issues.
The fourth principle is to, “Challenge participants toward more complex solutions
in addressing problems” (Rueda, 1998, para. 13). Because complex problems warrant
complex solutions, Rueda (1998, para. 14) writes, “Professional development activities
are better conceptualized as sustained problem-solving opportunities rather than short-
term exercises designed to address simple issues.” Previously, I presented ‘puzzle’ as a
more appropriate word than ‘problem.’ However, Rueda’s framing of development
activities as sustained problem-solving opportunities is similar to my conception of my
RP with the teachers as an extended period for solving pedagogical puzzles. Both
problems and puzzles can be considered complex phenomenon.
The last principle is, “Engage participants through dialogue, especially the
instructional conversation” (Rueda, 1998, para. 15). Rueda (1998, para. 16) calls
instructional conversation, “a blend of deliberate, planned teaching with more interactive,
responsive conversation.” This can be considered as timely instruction in Copland and
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Mann’s (2010) balanced approach. The strength of occasional trainer-centered
monologues is that “it enables a trainer to deliver a clear message in a very short space of
time. Trainees are left in no doubt as to what they should/should not do” (Copland &
Mann, 2010, p. 189).
4.3.3 Managing the Feedback Event
The above explains the principles a supervisor should follow but it does not
necessarily explain how to manage the feedback event. One issue is how much autonomy
the trainee should have. Teacher autonomy and supervisor control both have caveats. For
example, Hyland and Lo (2006) write that too much power with teachers leads to
misunderstandings, additionally, non-directive supervision can be time-consuming.
However, a supervisor-centered approach will not help a novice teacher develop the
necessary skills for reflection. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of
varying degrees of supervisor and teacher involvement will, it is my belief, help the
supervisor develop a balanced approach. Based on Boxer’s (1985) model of management
training, Edge (2011) provides such a framework.
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Figure 4.3.1 shows the style of work a teacher-educator and a teacher-learner can
engage in. This will later be used as a framework for analyzing the post-class conference
between me and the teachers. The symbol (+) represents a potentially positive result of
the style of work, and (-) represents a potentially undesirable one. Framing the experience
refers to who decides which classroom occurrence to examine. Interpreting the picture
refers to who interprets the occurrence. The top left quadrant shows an occurrence chosen
and interpreted by the teacher educator. According to Edge (2011), a potentially positive
outcome of this style of work is instructional. That is the teacher-learner is informed about
something new. A negative outcome is alienation. If feedback is restricted to this style,
then the student-teacher might begin to feel that this feedback is irrelevant to her. When
an occurrence is framed by a teacher-learner but interpreted by a teacher-educator it can
be revelatory in that the teacher-educator is showing the learner how to make sense of the
issue. If it is overused, it can lead to impotence, meaning that the teacher-learner is
relegated to hearing others’ sense making rather than her own. If the occurrence is framed
Figure 4.3.1 Style of work in the feedback event. Adapted from Edge (2011, pp. 21-22).
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by the teacher-educator but interpreted by the teacher-learner it can be emancipatory.
That is, teacher-learners can think of their own way forward. If this is over-represented it
can lead to fragmentation. This means that others are picking the incidents to analyze but
the teacher-learner is not choosing the incidents most relevant to her and not developing
a sense of awareness. Lastly, when an occurrence is framed and interpreted by the teacher-
learner it can be conjectural. That is, teacher-learners are identifying their own issues and
making sense of them. Overuse of this style of work can lead to insignificance in that
teacher-learners are neglecting to link their experiences with authoritative sources.
Regarding the framework, Edge (2011) acknowledges that discrete categories cannot
encapsulate all situations. However, this model does serve as a tool for understanding the
strengths and weakness of different work-styles in the post-class conference and for
teacher-learners and teacher-educators themselves to reflect on their preferred work styles.
In Chapter 10, I will relate the change of the TOT/teacher work style with how the content
of our discussions evolved.
4.3.4 Summary of Facilitating RP
As a TOT in this study, I aimed to encourage RP through a balanced approach.
Traditional roles typically assumed by the teacher-learner and supervisor in the feedback
event can conflict with the ideal of the teacher learning to become a reflective practitioner.
How the teachers and I resolve this conflict and how our relationship develops between
will be an area of focus in Chapters 7 to 9. The principles by Rueda (1998) as well as the
participation categories given by Edge (2011) will be used to reflect on the nature of
collaborative learning between the teachers and me and how the feedback event was
managed in Chapter 10.
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4.4 The Outcome: Development
As shown in the CHAT model in Figure P1 in the prologue, the intended outcome
of my period of collaboration with the teachers was the development or transformation of
both the teachers and me. This, in turn, would help transform the social context. In this
section, I will describe the type of transformation of the teachers that this study aimed for.
This study was based on a reflective model of development (Wallace, 1991). In the
reflective model, learning is experiential and teachers reconcile their craft, scientific, and
contextual knowledge to theorize practice. That is, expertise is seen as the integration of
formal and experiential knowledge and using it to envision the learning potential in
instructional contexts and respond (Borg, 2006). As the study progressed, it was hoped
that it would be easier for teachers to theorize their practice and I could encourage them
to do this.
I also hoped that the teachers and I could critically reflect on the objectives of the
Course of Study and textbook by comparing them to their students’ needs. Takahashi
(2011) discusses a development trajectory for teachers in Japan based on Freeman’s
(2009) scope of second language teacher education, and argues that teachers will not be
able to do critical reflection until a number of years into their teaching careers after they
have developed their knowledge of English and English instruction as well as their
identity as teachers.
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Edge (2011), on the other hand, provides ‘5 dimensions of becoming’ which I
interpreted to describe how teachers act and behave. These five dimensions are shown in
a diagram I constructed in Figure 4.4.1 Unlike me, Edge (2011) did not create a diagram
for these dimensions, because, he argued, the world is not divided “into its constituent
parts” (p.12). Instead, he uses these dimensions to give a holistic portrait of teacher
development. Edge does not say that teachers pass through these dimensions in a specific
order, but he does allude that those dimensions which I show on the bottom of the diagram
are what more developed teachers exhibit. Edge’s theory is useful in that it acknowledges
that development is not linear but shows a variety of ways in which teachers can
demmostrate growth.
The three models in this section have one commonality in that teachers are
considered more developed when they can theorize their own practice. Edge’s (2011)
dimensions best represent how this study can conceive of development of both the teacher
Figure 4.4.1. Edge’s Dimensions of becoming
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and TOT. Teachers will show signs of development if they demonstrate being in various
‘dimensions of becoming’ with the understanding that they are never located in a
particular dimension. I, the TOT, on the other hand, will demonstrate development if I
can help lead teachers into a type of reflection which will touch these dimensions in the
interviews.
4.5 Critical Incidents to Encapsulate the Process of Development
To finish this chapter, I discuss how the process of teachers’ development can be
captured. Chapters 3 and 4 introduced a social context and a process of teacher
development both relevant to this study. Chapter 3 described different components of the
teachers’ activity system. These components would conflict at some point causing
uncertainty for the teacher. Through reflective practice in the feedback event, the teachers
and I would seek to address the puzzles causing this uncertainty. The outcome would be
our personal transformation. Because learning and experience go hand in hand, a
teacher’s development will be captured in their experiences. Critical Incidents is a term
used to describe these experiences.
Critical Incidents (CIs) have been used in qualitative research for over 50 years to
analyze professional learning in such disciplines as industrial and organizational
psychology, communications, nursing, job analysis, counseling, marketing, and
education (Butterfield et al., 2005). A CI, in general terms, can be thought of as an event
or situation which marks a “significant turning point or change in the life of a person”
(Tripp, 1993, p. 24). In the field of Teaching English as a Second Language, Richards
and Farrell (2005) describe it as an unplanned and unanticipated event that occurs during
a lesson and that serves to trigger insights about some aspect of teaching and learning.
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In many cases, CIs can be considered as moments of uncertainty in which the teacher
questions her knowledge. However, according to Angelides (2001), CIs are not
necessarily restricted to sensational events involving significant tensions. Rather, they
can be routine incidents that happen in every school. This routine incident can trigger in
the teacher a new understanding of an educational phenomenon.
Recounting impressionable experiences with teachers can encapsulate how different
components of CHAT conflict (e.g. school culture vs. education policy) in moments of
uncertainty and also reveal the nature of the teachers’ reflective thought and informed
action. Analyzing experiences as they occur over time, might also inform us on the
teachers’ development trajectory. In the Methodology Chapter, I will discuss how these
types of incidents will be identified and analyzed.
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5. Methods
Based on my examination of the social context and relevant literature on teacher
development, I posed the following research questions.
1. What kind of pedagogical puzzles do the teachers face over the course of
this study?
2. How do the teachers develop their practice over the span of 18 months?
What kind of environmental factors impact their development?
3. What is the role of the researcher as a Teacher of Teachers (TOT) in
helping the teacher to address these puzzles?
In this chapter, I will explain how I have answered these research questions. First, I
describe how the participants were recruited and then discuss the procedures followed for
data collection and analysis. Following that, I discuss the overall strategy for establishing
validity of the findings. Lastly, I review ethical considerations made to protect the
interests of the study participants.
5.1 The Participants and Their Recruitment
The study took place in Ishimoto City,14 the capitol of a rural prefecture in Japan,
with a population of about 290,000 people. The participants were chosen by convenience
sampling, which is described as “a group of participants who have been recruited for a
given study because they were readily accessible” (Saumure & Given, 2008, p. 124).
When I first solicited the prefectural BOE for assistance, I learned that there was a total
14 Pseudonyms are given for the names of the city, schools, and participants.
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of 9 first-year junior high-school English teachers in the prefecture. Three of these
teachers were located at schools within a 20-minute bicycle ride from my place of
employment. The other six teachers were scattered around the prefecture with the closest
one being 40 minutes by car. Although it would be ideal to collect data from teachers
located in different areas and thus more diversified settings, having three teachers in close
proximity enabled me to visit much more frequently than I could have with teachers at
farther locations. Furthermore, The Ishimoto Board of Education formally introduced me
and this project to the principals of these three schools, and after meeting with the
principal and prospective research participants of each school, I had their provisional
consent of participation (see Section 4.5 for further discussion on receiving the
participants’ consent). The three participants were Risa, female, who was a recent college
graduate, Maiko, female, who became a full-time junior high school teacher mid-career,
and Yuta, male, who had recently obtained a Master’s degree in English education at a
Japanese university. A detailed description of each participant will be given in Chapter 5.
5.2 Data Collection
For Risa and Maiko, the study lasted from October 2013 to March 2015. For Yuta,
the study ended after six months. As with many linguistic ethnographic studies, the main
methods of data gathering were interviews and participant observation of classes. From
these I was able to attain segmented interview transcripts, class fieldnotes, and various
artifacts used by the teachers. These later served as a means for identifying, confirming,
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and exploring the pedagogical puzzles encountered by the teachers, their beliefs and
preferred practices, and the nature of the TOT/teacher relationship.
5.2.1 Ethnographic Interviews
The purpose of an ethnographic interview is to “explore the meanings that people
ascribe to actions and events in their cultural worlds” (Roulston, 2010, p. 19). There is an
inherent conflict between the purpose of the ethnographic interview and the reflexivity
that ethnography acknowledges. Although the interview is supposed to support the
researcher in gaining an emic perspective (Copland & Creese, 2015), the participants and
researcher are reconstructing the realities of the context together (Davies, 2008) and thus
the perspective of the researchers themselves are reflected in this reality.
The interviews were, except in a few cases, conducted at the schools, mostly after a
class in the middle of the school day. Teachers were usually able to spare from 20 or 50
minutes. Interviews took place in such venues as the staff room, counseling room,
meeting room, home-economics classroom, homeroom, or principal’s office. They were
not always conducted in private. From the perspective of the teachers, the ethnographic
interview was likely interpreted as a ‘feedback event.’ The purpose of our meeting was
to discuss their teaching and they expected some kind of feedback or advice.
Altogether, I interviewed Risa 16 times, Maiko 14 times, and Yuta 8 times. Spradley
(1979) writes that it is important to have a purpose for the interview and to make it clear
to the participant. I had an overall purpose of discussing the pedagogical puzzles the
teachers faced as well as hearing a rationale for their teaching practices. Teachers were
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made aware of this purpose at the beginning of this study and again six months into the
study. Towards the ending of the study, though, our interviews had evolved to mostly free
discussion. This will be explained in Chapter 9. I conducted what Copland and Creese
(2015) describe as an “informal interview,” there were no written questions but I
eventually developed a repertoire of questioning strategies to facilitate discussion about
the points I wanted to discuss.
In all the interviews, I made an effort to promote dialogic talk, which was discussed
in Section 4.3.2. In dialogic talk, supervisors engage teachers “in talk that is collective,
reciprocal, supportive, cumulative and purposeful in order to co-construct knowledge”
(Copland & Mann, 2010, p. 176). Among the techniques I used to co-construct knowledge
were: sharing my ethnographic notes with teachers (Edge & Mann, 2013), stimulated
recall (Borg, 2006), and cooperative development in which I assumed the role of
‘understander’ (Edge, 2011).
In order to create an environment where the teachers would want to talk, I made an
effort to develop rapport (Spradley, 1979) with the participants at the beginning of the
study. From our first session, I made it clear that I would not critique or evaluate their
teaching on the Research Participant Agreement Form (See Appendix 1). I also made an
effort not to appear judgmental about the preferred teaching practices or philosophies of
the teachers when it differed from my own (I was not always successful at this).
To make the teacher feel comfortable, I was conscious of the need to be a good
listener in each interview session. Listening is the “most important aspect of any interview
(Mann, 2016, p. 116). According to Denzin (1989, p. 43), a good listener does not gossip,
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does not interrupt, does not share experiences, learns what to listen for, and has a reason
to be a listener. For me personally, not gossiping, learning what to listen for, and having
a reason to be a listener or making the purpose of the interview clear, was not problematic.
“Not interrupting” was a technique that I improved on after reflecting on the interview
interaction in my own research (Hall, 2014a). “Do not share personal experiences,”
however, was a rule that I frequently violated in an attempt to build rapport. Rapley
(2001) argues that the interview should not be seen as only a reflection of life on the
outside and that interview talk is always a product of the specific circumstances in which
it took place. Therefore, I deviated a little from Denzin (1989) in that I did not consider
all interviewer talk to be bad. Because the purpose of the study was to learn about the
teachers, though, I had to ensure that they would be doing most of the speaking.
My primary techniques for good listening were ‘probes and prompts.’ These
techniques “stimulate or encourage an informant to provide data on topics with minimal
influence from the interviews” (De Leon & Cohen, 2005, p. 200). The probes included
the silent probe, the ‘uh-huh’ probe, and the ‘tell-me-more’ probe.
Overall, I was conscious of methods to encourage teachers to reflect on their
teaching and aware of the importance of being a good listener. However, I did not always
follow my mantra and my imperfect interview techniques contributed to the knowledge
constructed between interviewer and interviewee. However, as Roulston (2011) argues,
by analyzing how knowledge is constructed in an interview and how interviewees respond
to the interviewer’s ‘mistakes,’ we can learn their feelings about a topic. Therefore, while
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attempting good interview practices and acknowledging interview missteps, I tried to
elucidate the novice English teacher experience.
5.2.2 Interview Data and Data Management
Interviews were conducted over a period between October 2013 and March 2015
and took place about once a month. Table 5.2.1 shows the number of interviews per
participant, the number of transcripts produced with audio, the total number of words
transcribed, and total interview time. For Risa and Maiko, all interviews were recorded
and transcribed. With Yuta, six of the eight interviews were recorded and transcribed.
The two interviews I did not record came under tense conditions where Yuta spoke
frankly about some difficult circumstances. To earn his trust, I left the IC Recorder off.
Interviews were transcribed using Transana (Woods, 2016) which is a program
specializing in the qualitative analysis of video and audio data. Using the time code
feature in Transana, I divided the interview into topical scenes. This basic idea was
adapted from Erickson (2006) who recommends breaking down classroom video data
into scenes with a rough transcription or description. In this rough transcription, I wrote
Table 5.2.1. Interview data collection
Participant Dates
(First to Last) Interviews
Audio and
Transcripts
Words
transcribed
Interview time
(hr:min)
Risa Oct 28 2013 –
Mar 6 2015 16 16 80180 12:01
Maiko Oct 22 2013 –
Mar 16 2015 14 14 39347 8:02
Yuta Oct 21 2013 –
Mar 28 2014 8 5 28504 3:49
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down all words that were spoken and partially transcribed overlapping turns, false starts,
or interruptions when they appeared to have been an integral element of the interaction.
Those scenes chosen for further analysis would be transcribed in detail later, A similar
method was also undertaken by Copland (Copland & Creese, 2015) in her study of
feedback in post-class conferences where she only transcribed in fine detail the sections
she designated for microanalysis.
Regarding the extent of detail into the transcripts, the more detailed or accurate the
transcript, the more time it takes to write and the less readable it becomes (van Lier, 1996).
Following the advice of Richards (2003), I aimed to include the most essential
interactional features while writing transcripts that could be read easily. Van Lier (1996)
writes that there is no solution to the dilemma of accuracy versus readability: “the
transcriber opts for some reasonable balance between accuracy and simplicity and must
be prepared to defend that balance” (p.81). For those sections designated for detailed
analysis, an effort was made to produce readable transcripts that also accurately portrayed
such interactional phenomena as acknowledgement tokens, interruptions, IRF, or
intonation to better elucidate the social context. Transcription conventions are displayed
and explained in the prologue to the findings.
5.2.3 Participant Observation of Classrooms
In this section, I will first describe the nature of my involvement in the classes. Next,
I will describe how I used video, audio, field notes, and transcriptions to document my
observations.
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Altogether, I observed a total of 50 classes, 22 for Risa, 20 for Maiko, and 8 for Yuta.
The nature of my involvement in each class can be termed ‘participant observation,’
which is synonymous with doing ethnographic work. Davies (2008) describes it as the
typical form of research used by ethnographers whose primary purpose is “long term
personal involvement with those being studied, including participation in their lives to
the extent that the researcher comes to understand the culture as an insider” (p. 81).
Becoming comfortable as a ‘participant observer’ required a few months of
experience. Richards et al. (2012) write that the only way to learn to do field work is to
roll up your sleeves and start working. Much as with the interviews, I was learning the
art of observation while doing it, and the roles I assumed changed as the study progressed.
In a much-cited article, Gold (1958) provides the following classifications for participant
observation which can be thought to lie on a continuum: complete observer, observer as
participant (more observer than participant), participant-as-observer (more participant
than observer), and complete participant. According to Davies (2008), the ethnographer’s
role is constantly changing between observer and participant. Throughout the study, my
role constantly moved up and down the observer/participant continuum depending on
each teacher’s circumstances.
5.2.4 Classroom Observation Data and Data Management
Table 5.2.2 summarizes the number of classes observed in this study and the types
of data collected. Here, I will explain how I collected and archived the data using
fieldnotes, audio, video and finally ‘Transana notes.’ Transana notes refer to fieldnotes
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taken in the Transana program. The reason why they are distinguished from regular field
notes is that they were synchronized with audio or class video. This enabled me to review
the audio or video for any written observation.
For all three teachers, I initially relied on fieldnotes as class records because the
teachers, the students, and I were all trying to become comfortable with one another. In
addition, Yuta was struggling to develop a good rapport with his students and I thought
that filming would add to his stress. By November 2013, I began to audio record all
classes by using an IC Recorder and clipping a wireless microphone to my shirt. I did not
feel that I had developed a comfortable enough relationship with the teachers to have
them wear the mic.
By February 2014, I began to video record Maiko’s lessons because they were
proceeding smoothly and the video camera did not make her uncomfortable. By April
2014, I thought that I had developed a sufficient rapport with Risa to record her classes.
Often, the teachers wore wireless microphones. This gave me a more complete record of
the teachers’ talk in class because I could hear their interactions with the students. A
drawback was that when I stopped wearing the wireless mic, I no longer had a recording
Table 5.2.2 Summary of class data collection
Subject Dates (First to Last) Classes Transana notes
(Field notes) Audio Video
Risa 10/18/2013 - 3/6/2015 22 22 (2) 5 15
Maiko 10/9/2013 - 3/3/2015 20 15 (5) 3 12
Yuta 10/21/2013 - 2/21/2014 8 4 (4) 4 0
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of my interactions with the students. Recording my conversation with students had proved
to be an illuminating way of understanding the reality of the classroom (Hall, 2014a).
Recording teachers’ interactions with students, however, enabled me to collect data on
how they managed students. Yuta left the study before I started the video recording so I
only had fieldnotes and audio of his classes.
In the remainder of this section, the methodology used for fieldnotes, and later,
Transana notes, will be discussed. Emerson et.al (2011, p. 15) argue that fieldnotes should
1) not separate researchers’ actions from what they observed, 2) give special attention to
the indigenous meanings and concerns of the people studied, 3) record how the
researchers arrived at a particular conclusion through their participation, and 4) detail the
social and interactional processes that make up people’s lives. Admittedly, when I started
the fieldwork, I did not plan for my fieldnotes to contain these four components. However,
as the study progressed, they began to incorporate them. The reason was that as I became
more comfortable in the field, I was able to focus more on the behavior of the students
and teachers rather than be preoccupied with my own actions.
At first, I used only fieldnotes to record my class observations. Inspired by Nunan
and Bailey (2009) and Richards (2003), I attempted to write semi-structured fieldnotes.
This strategy was to record with key words or sentences what happened in every minute
of the class. After leaving the field, I entered the observations into the computer. The
problems with this method were first, when I was asked to participate, I could not
continue to write, and second, I was recording student and teacher actions but not my
interpretation of them.
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Extract 5.2.1 below shows what the fieldnotes evolved into. I changed my style to
jotting down observations when I could, focusing particularly on what the students were
doing, how the students interacted with the teacher, and which students were occupying
the teachers’ attention. These notes are often called ‘jottings’ or ‘scribbles’ (Copland, in
press). Therefore, my fieldnotes began to consist of seating charts labeling students by
where they sit (A1, A2), and I described which students engaged in notable behavior and
how the teachers responded to their actions (Lines 14 – 16).
Extract 5.2.1. Field Notes from Yuta’s class on November 26, 2013
2-5, 34 students, 5 students are absent
9:50 - 10:40 Class
Artifacts: Textbook, page 96, 2 worksheets, blackboard, CD
I arrive at about 9:42 on a rainy day. The vice principal 1
can see me from the staff room and buzzes me in. Yuta is not 2
in the staff room and I sit on the couch and wait. He comes 3
and gets me at about 9:48 and we go to 2-5 together. He 4
apologizes to me for last week and I tell him that there is 5
absolutely no need to apologize. I appreciate him letting me 6
see his classes. On the way to the classroom a student says 7
hello to me and asks me my name. Yuta jokingly scolds him 8
for not saying his name and the student tells me he is Mr. 9
Yoshikawa. I wonder if the student gets Yuta’s joke. It was 10
a little awkward. 11
9:50
He starts with the day, weather and date and then says that 12
today Mr. Hall is here but don't be nervous. 13
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<Abbreviated>
All students work in pairs except A6, B6, B7. They are doing 14
Q & A. Some are giving real answers while others are just 15
reading the answers on the worksheet.16
I also recorded how I felt at certain moments (Lines 6 - 7) and the significance of the
actions that I observed (Lines 10 - 11). After taking notes on site, I typed them into my
computer, adding retrospective thoughts as well as how I felt at certain moments.
According to Copland (in press), researchers writing how they feel in their fieldnotes can
support a reflexive approach in their work, because it reveals how a researcher interpreted
certain events.
The type of ethnographic fieldnote shown in Extract 5.2.1 was closer to the guidelines
provided by Emerson et al. (2011). First, the researcher’s perspective and actions were
recorded, second, the concerns of the people in the study were documented. For example,
it is possible that Yuta felt nervous about having “Mr. Hall” in his class (Line 13), third,
in terms of recording how researchers came to a particular conclusion, Yuta jokingly
scolding the student, “Mr. Yoshikawa,” made me sense that the relationship between him
and the students was troubled (Lines 8 – 11).
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After I started to audio and video record classes, my fieldnotes changed to what I have
labeled ‘Transana notes.’ While I was recording a class, I would continue to write my
observations as well as draw a diagram of the class to note students’ actions. After class,
I would write my field notes into Transana. Using the time-coding features of the program
I could synchronize my observations with the video or audio. As with the interviews,
using the techniques recommended by Erickson (2006), I divided the class into scenes or
segments. Scenes consisted of either transcriptions of participant interactions,
descriptions and interpretation of participant actions, or both. Figure 5.2.1 shows a
Transana screen shot. The enlarged text represents one scene, in which Risa began to
introduce vocabulary after a brief interruption.
Figure 5.2.1 Screen shot of video and Transana notes for Risa’s class on June 20, 2014
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Overall, the benefit of Transana notes was that they enabled me to record routine
interactions between the teachers and students and using the time coding feature, divide
a class into scenes. Also, I could easily reference the video/audio to which a specific
classroom scene belonged. This would prove indispensable for me when it came to
identifying classroom scenes as critical incidents, which is explained in Section 5.3.3.
5.2.5 Document Collection
Textbooks, worksheets, textbook manuals, can-do lists, achievement tests,
proficiency tests, workbooks, and reference books were all tools (see CHAT description
in Section 2.4) which played a vital role in the way the teachers set objectives, chose
activities, and organized curricular content. Any tool that a teacher used was collected.
5.3 Data analysis
My next task was to make sense of this data and use it to answer my research
questions. Bogdan and Bilken (2007) describe data analysis as the process of
“systematically searching and arranging the interview transcripts, field notes, and other
materials that you accumulate to enable you to come up with findings” (p.159). In Figure
5.3.1 on the next page, I have divided my own process into phase 1, creating a holistic
portrait of the experience, and phase 2, determining teacher development and influencing
factors.
In the first phase, my objective was to synthesize interviews, classroom scenes
depicted in my fieldnotes and Transana notes, and artifacts collected into a chronological
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series of critical incidents (CIs). The process of creating CIs is explained in Sections 5.3.3
and 5.3.4.
These CIs, in turn, elucidated the teachers’ puzzles, practice and principles, or
relationship with the TOT. In phase 2, I attempted to determine the nature of each
teacher’s development by considering his or her puzzle, practice, and relationship with
the TOT.
5.3.1 Phase 1-1: Code and Summarize each Interview
Coding consists of assigning names to parts of data that represent what it is about. It
is a way of reducing and indexing data as well as making comparisons (Charmaz, 2006).
My method for coding interviews was informed by Guest, MacQueen, and Namey’s
(2012) applied thematic analysis, the primary goal of which is to “understand how people
Figure 5.3.1. Phases in the process of analysis
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feel, think, and behave, within a particular context relative to a particular research
question” (Guest et al., 2012, p. 13). Applied thematic analysis takes a phenomenological
approach; although it can be used to answer specific research questions, there are no
preconceived categories the researcher applies to the data. It consists of the following
procedures: segmenting text, writing codes for the segments, grouping these codes into
categories, and, finally, expanding on these categories and codes through the
development of themes, concepts or theories.
As explained earlier, interviews were initially broken down into segments in the
transcription process. Using NVivo (QSR International, 2016), a CAQDAS (Computer-
assisted qualitative analysis software), I first assigned codes to segments of the interviews
employing “descriptive coding” (Saldaña, 2013). This entailed assigning a keyword or
phrase to a segment of data to describe what was going on. These descriptive codes were
then grouped into categories, which were eventually grouped into themes. Inspired by the
constant comparative method in Charmaz (2006), I continuously recoded previous
interviews, changing categories as new interviews changed my understanding of the
relationship between codes and categories. Constant revision and comparison as well as
memo writing enabled me to establish a rationale for labeling the data and to create
overarching themes that would fit the interview data for all three participants.
Figure 5.3.2, below, shows an NVivo coded segment of text from an interview with
Risa on June 30, 2014. The descriptive code, or the last code in the hierarchy, was as
specific as possible; I tried to write it in the words of the teacher. In Figure 5.3.2, however,
I did not. The descriptive code here, Challenging Question, fell under the category
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Indirect Support, which belonged to the theme Education Talk. In this situation, I was
asking Risa a challenging question about the efficacy of the way she conducted
vocabulary practice in hopes of getting her to rethink her methodology. The purpose of
this question, therefore, was to prompt her to reflect on and improve her practice. Thus,
it was a type of indirect support. Indirect Support was classified under Education Talk,
which marked any interaction geared toward helping the teachers improve their practice.
Later the theme, Education Talk, would be used to answer the research question about
the nature of the TOT and teacher relationship. It should be noted that ultimately the
categories given for the codes were based on my perspective. For example, Risa might
have interpreted the challenging question as an indirect criticism rather than a kind of
indirect support.
Figure 5.3.2. Coding extract from NVivo of Risa’s interview on June 30, 2014
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Figure 5.3.3 shows each theme and its primary categories. The first theme, Bumps,
was used to describe something unexpected that happened inside class or in the interview
that caused the teachers or me to reflect on it. The first category for bumps was puzzles.
A puzzle could be considered a complex issue that was never fully resolved; it would
appear in various classes over time. Puzzles would become the focus of the first research
question. The second category resolved, was a minor issue with a particular technique the
teacher used in a class that the teacher was able to resolve. For example, Maiko noticed
that students were making mistakes with English article usage in one class and decided
to remind students about a particular article rule in other classes so this mistake would
not happen again. The third category, J Insight, consisted of epiphanies experienced by
me as a result of discussing a puzzle. Problems refer to issues that were causing the
Figure 5.3.3 Themes and categories
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teachers so much anxiety that they would not exercise their agency. This category was
only applicable to Yuta and will be explained further in chapter 10.
Education Talk, as explained earlier, describes the type of support given to the
teacher. The primary categories were: Empathy, when the researcher sympathized with
the teacher; Equal, when the researcher and teacher debated an issue or collaborated as
equals; Explicit Advice, when the researcher gave direct advice to the teacher; Indirect
Support, when the researcher provided implicit advice, and Solutions, when the teacher
or teacher and researcher together, proposed a solution to an unresolved issue.
The next theme, Student, was information about the characteristics of students and
was subdivided into a description of students in the first year of the study, First Year, and
a description of students in the second year of the study, Second Year. The reason for this
division was that my relationship with students in the second year of this study was
different; I knew many students by name and understood how individual students could
affect a class. Second year was further categorized by homeroom. This enabled me to
quickly retrieve background information on students in a particular homeroom.
Interviewer Missteps marked incidents in which I likely committed a ‘mustn’t’ in
the rules of the research interview. About Researcher refers to instances in which I talked
about my own experience so much that it took speaking time away from the teacher;
Impediment to interrupting the teacher, ending discussion on a topic; Missed Opportunity
to missing an opportunity to extract information about an intriguing topic, and No Follow
Up to failing to follow up on an issue.
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The last theme, Teaching Style and Cognition was the broadest. Its first category,
External, referred to talk about school policy and the national curriculum. Overall
Teaching Principles referred to talk about the teacher’s philosophy of teaching, Practice
referred to talk about the teacher’s preferred way of teaching. Development referred to
any kind of past or present opportunities for professional development the teacher
experienced.
In many cases, the primary categories were divided into second level or third level
categories which were designed to “detail or enrich the entry” (Saldaña, 2013, p. 77). The
descriptive coding under the lowest level category was usually done using the words of
the teacher. The labeling of the categories and themes, on the other hand, was usually
done from the perspective of the researcher. Figure 5.3.4 shows the second-level and
third-level categories and the descriptive codes under the primary category Puzzles for
the theme, Bumps.
Figure 5.3.4. Second and third-level categories, descriptive codes under Puzzles
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When the coding was completed, I could match the research questions with the
relevant interview data. Table 5.3.1 shows the themes and coding categories which I used
to investigate each research question.
Table 5.3.1 Research questions with their related themes and primary categories
Research questions Related themes and primary
categories
What kind of pedagogical puzzles do the teachers
face over the course of this study? Bumps: Puzzles, problems
How do the teachers develop their practice over the
span of 18 months? What kind of environmental
factors impact their development?
Teaching Style and Cognition: All
Bumps: Puzzles, resolved
Education Talk: Solutions
What is the role of the researcher as a Teacher of
Teachers (TOT) in helping the teachers to address
these puzzles?
Interviewer Missteps: All
Education Talk: All
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5.3.2 Phase 1-2: Create a Timeline of Interviews Divided into Periods
After generating the codes, the next step was to use them to create a timeline of
events (e.g. the kind of puzzles teachers experienced at the beginning, middle and end) to
determine the nature of change in teachers’ practice and issues faced as well as the nature
of the TOT and teacher relationship. To do this, I generated a summary of codes for each
interview, and based on those codes wrote an analytic memo, or a description of the major
themes of the interview based on the codes (A partial image is shown in Figure 5.3.5.).
Figure 5.3.5. Sample of summary of codes and analytic memo of Risa’s interview on June
30, 2014
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Based on the analytical memos and codes, I created a spread sheet for each teacher
which summarized the interviews, classes, and coding. Figure 5.3.6 shows a snapshot of
the spreadsheet. The codes gave me a quick understanding of what was discussed in the
interview and the memos helped me understand the surrounding circumstances of the talk.
Using the spread sheet, I divided my time with each teacher into time periods. Each time
period represented a different circumstance the teachers and I were experiencing, which
thus affected our discussion.
Figure 5.3.6 Partial view of spread sheet
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At the top of the Figure 5.3.6 is a screen shot of the spread sheet. Below that is a
‘zoomed in’ shot of the data that became Period 1 for Risa. In this period, Risa and I were
getting to know each other and I was trying to define my own role as a TOT. The data in
the red square shows that this period consisted of two interviews and gives the dates for
the interviews. Next to that is a list of the descriptive codes for the interviews, and, to the
right, a list of the classes I observed. The blue box shows two episodes that can serve as
CIs, the first being my initial visit to Risa, the second being a classroom scene that
occurred on November 18. To the right are descriptive statistics of the coding for the
interviews, which show the number of transcribed words coded as well as the total words
coded for each theme.
In the first interview, Risa and I primarily discussed her teaching experience and
education; thus 55% of words were coded under Teaching Style and Cognition. Risa also
discussed some dilemmas she was confronting and therefore Bumps was a recurring
theme. Finally, I gave Risa some gratuitous advice, and that fell under Education Talk. In
the second interview, I attempted to give Risa a lot of advice; therefore forty percent of
the words are coded under Education Talk. It is important to note that the descriptive
statistics (words per code) were used to give me a quick understanding of what was
discussed from interview to interview or in a particular period and enable me to identify
certain themes to further investigate.
After making time periods for each teacher, I was able to create three overarching
time periods that would represent my time with all teachers. Table 5.3.2, below, shows
the overarching time periods on top and the teachers’ time periods below. The first
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overarching period was called ‘We are all Novices.’ In this period, the teachers and I were
trying to establish a comfortable working relationship. Period 2, ‘A Fresh Start,’ marked
the beginning of the academic year. In this period, I had developed a research strategy of
eliciting and discussing critical incidents with Risa and Maiko, which, at the beginning,
seemed to give a renewed vigor for the project. By this time, however, Yuta had left the
study. In Period 3, ‘Partnering up,’ the relationship I had with teachers changed from that
of researcher and participant to being, in my view, more partner-like.
In Risa’s case, we spent many of our interviews discussing problems she was
experiencing with students. In Maiko’s case, I helped her prepare for an open class
conference for which teachers throughout the prefecture were invited.
Table 5.3.2. Diving the study with each teacher into three time periods
Overarching
Time Periods
Period 1
‘We are all Novices’
Period 2
‘A Fresh Start’
Period 3
‘Partnering up’
October, 2013
– March, 2014
April
– August, 2014
September, 2014
– March, 2015
Risa Time
Periods
Understanding Risa’s
Practice
Getting to know Risa
(Oct – Nov)
Assisting Risa (Dec –
Feb)
Risa becomes a
novice teacher again
Eliciting puzzles to
help Risa’s
development (Apr –
Jul)
The Ups and Downs
Talking about students
(Sep – Oct)
Talking about Risa and
students (Nov – Dec)
Chaos and order (Jan –
Feb)
Wrapping up (Mar)
Maiko Time
Periods
Learning from Maiko
Few puzzles! (Oct –
Dec)
(Jan – Mar)
Maiko in Control
Collaboratively
finding puzzles. (Jun
– Jul)
The Open School
Conference
The open class: before and
after (Oct – Dec)
Learning more from Maiko
(Jan – Mar)
Yuta Time
Periods
Empathizing with Yuta
Something is wrong(Oct)
Open class and aftermath (Nov)
Yuta in his element(Dec)
To the brink(Jan – Mar)
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Phase 1-3: Identify Classroom or Interview Events to Serve as CIs
The next step was choosing interview interactions and classroom events to serve as
critical incidents that represent the typical puzzle, way of teaching, or manifestation of
the TOT and teacher relationship in each period. A critical incident was described as an
experience that prompts teacher learning in Section 4.5. In my methodology a critical
incident (CI) was considered a particular event that encapsulated the intricacies of one of
the research themes.
The following process, also recommended by Tripp (1993), was followed. First,
notable events related to the research questions were written into the spreadsheet for each
time period under “Possible CIs” (see the blue box in Figure 5.3.6). These events were
labeled as Puzzles, Practice, or TOT. Next, I selected a series of different events for
writing up that I thought could, collectively, give a portrait of the evolution of the puzzles,
preferred practices, and nature of TOT relationship for each teacher over the course of
the study.
CIs may be identified in two ways. The first is to have the teachers write the CIs
themselves and for the researcher to categorize them and discuss their implications
(Farrell, 2017; Griffin, 2003; Hall & Townsend, 2017). The second way is for the
researchers themselves to label specific incidents recorded in their data as critical as they
relate to a specific area of investigation (Angelides, 2001; Halquist & Musanti, 2010).
For an event to be critical, it “has to be shown to have a more general meaning and to
indicate something of importance in a broader context” (Halquist & Musanti, 2010, p.
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450). I chose to employ the second methodology with some transparent criteria of
selection. This reduced the burden the study placed on the teachers because it did not
require them to write journals. The CI selection criteria were: 1) the incident was
representative of a particular period spent with a teacher; 2) it was related to one of the
three themes of the study; 3) it could be related to a broader context.
5.3.4 Phase 1-4: Writing and Analyzing the CIs in each Period
The final step was writing up the CIs for each period. CIs were reconstructed using
classroom fieldnotes and transcripts, interview transcripts, and collected artifacts such as
worksheets. (The analysis was not of the artifacts themselves, but rather of how they were
used). CIs written in the field of education have two essential components: a description
of the event, and, its interpretation (Farrell, 2013; Romano, 2006; Tripp, 1993). In this
study, the event was the incident selected in the previous step. According to Tripp, a CI
should be seen as an example of a category in a wider context. He adds that, “critical
incidents are not simply observed, they are created”(Tripp, 1993, p. 27) . Therefore, the
purpose of the interpretation was to show how the incident was critical by relating the
event to one of the larger categories of the study.
As this study was a linguistic ethnography, I identified the micro and macro social
processes behind the CIs. When interpreting an incident, a microanalysis of classroom or
interview talk was employed to examine how the participant and researcher perceived the
event, and my own ethnographic research was used to consider micro and macro factors
influencing participants. The analysis was informed by Young’s practice theory (2008,
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2009), which is a framework for examining how social interaction is locally constructed
and affected by larger societal forces. Young describes social interaction activities as
having “ their own rules, their own constraints, and their own structures” (2008, p. 57).
This he calls discursive practices. Practice theory acknowledges the agency of individuals
to shape a particular social event through discursive practices. According to Young
(2009), discursive practices consist of identity (e.g. a participant’s role as a hearer or
speaker), linguistic resources (e.g. register, modes of meaning), and interactional
resources (e.g. turn taking, speech acts). Practice theory also takes into account Erickson’s
(2004, p. viii) assertion that the “conduct of talk in local social interaction is profoundly
influenced by processes that occur beyond the temporal and spatial horizon of the
immediate occasion of interaction.” Therefore, the analysis of classroom and interview
scenes involved looking at how they were constructed by the aforementioned discursive
practices while also considering the influence of larger social forces.
5.3.5 Phase 2: Determine Teacher Development and Influencing Factors
To recapitulate, phase one creates CIs of the puzzles, practices, and TOT relationship
of the three teachers and shows the situated meaning of these events through
microanalysis. Phase two synthesizes what was learned in the CIs to answer the research
questions. Below, I discuss how different types of data and analyses were used in phase
2 to answer each research question.
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RQ1: What kind of pedagogical puzzles do the teachers face over the course of this study?
This question was answered by comparing the puzzles of each teacher as well as
how they addressed them. CIs related to the puzzles were referenced to provide examples.
RQ2: How do the teachers develop their practice over the span of 18 months? What kind
of environmental factors impact their development?
I completed a CHAT chart of the social context of each teacher and considered how
it interacted with the teacher’s object-oriented action of teaching a form of CLT. The
model enabled me to consider how elements of the micro-context revealed in Teaching
Style and Cognition as well as the macro-context discussed in Chapter 3 might have
impacted each teacher’s practice. A teacher’s development was considered her own
transformation as a result of her interaction with her social context. I used the models of
development in Section 4.4 to consider how the teachers changed.
RQ3: What is the role of the researcher as a Teacher of Teachers (TOT) in helping the
teacher to address these puzzles?
To answer this question, I considered some of the puzzles the teachers and I
encountered trying to engage in reflective practice. Second, using Edge’s (2011)
participatory framework, I look at the type of teacher and TOT talk that was conducted
in each of the three time periods with the teachers. Finally, referencing Section 4.3.2, I
considered the extent to which we were able to engage in dialogic talk. The coding
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enabled me to identify the time periods as well as to understand the topics that we
discussed.
5.4 Establishing Trustworthiness
Davies (2008) writes that reliability is not applicable to ethnography because no
ethnographic study is perfectly repeatable (p.101). Thus, my overall strategy was to
establish what Lincoln and Guba (1985) call trustworthiness. That is, I have made an
effort to be as transparent about 1) the type of data collected; 2) how and when the data
were collected; 3) how the data were archived and organized; and 4) how the data were
analyzed. The readers should understand my methodology as well as how I reached my
conclusions, and judge the validity for themselves.
In terms of generalizability, the study aims for theoretical inference. Blommaert and
Dong (2010) argue that data can represent cases of larger categories if theoretical models
are applied to them. They say, “[t]heory is the outcome of the theorisation of the data”
(Blommaert & Dong, 2010, p. 12). In other words, conclusions can be “generalizable in
the context of a particular theoretical debate” (Davies, 2008, p. 103). Through a process
of trustworthy data collection and analysis, this study seeks to offer cases to inform theory
on teacher learning (Section 4.1), the role of TOT in teacher learning (Sections 4.2 & 4.3),
and conducting CLT-inspired teaching in the Japanese JHS context (Section 3.4).
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5.5 Ethics
There were two types of ethical decisions I had to make. The first was pre-planned
considerations of how to protect the participants’ interests before the study began. These
decisions were made before the study began when I was receiving approval from the
ethics committee. The second was decisions I had to be make while engaged in the study.
In a Linguistic Ethnography, unforeseen ethical issues often arise as a result of the
researcher’s presence in the field and are not easily resolved (Copland & Creese, 2016).
To finish this section, I discuss these unforeseen issues.
5.51 Pre-study Ethical Issues
A consent form for the participants was approved by the Aston University Ethics
Committee after several months of negotiation. (I began the PhD program affiliated with
Aston and thus needed permission from their ethics committee.) The completed consent
form is in Appendix 1. When drafting the consent form, following basic guidelines from
Bogdan and Bilken (2007), I aimed to ensure that the participants would enter the research
project voluntarily, be clear about the nature of the study and their obligations, and that
the risks they were exposed to would not be greater than the benefits. In the process of
receiving consent from the informants, two issues were raised by the ethics committee
which were resolved.
The first issue concerned the teachers’ rights to refuse participation. In the
recruitment phase, which began before the study was approved, the Ishimoto Board of
Education contacted the principals of the three schools and received their tentative
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permission for me to conduct this study. When I first met the teachers, I spoke to them
together with their principals. In that setting, it was difficult for the teachers to refuse
participation. Although the teachers were put in a compromising position, following
proper bureaucratic protocol ensured that nobody in the upper rungs of the school
hierarchy would object to the study later. To assure teachers that they could participate in
this study on their own terms, I made it clear in the consent form that they could refuse
to participate in the study at any time, I would always do as they instructed me in class,
and that they could cancel observations or interviews at any time without any objections
from me. Throughout the study, I fulfilled these promises.
The second issue was the ethics committee’s concern that students’ privacy would
be compromised with the video recording. The root of this concern lay in my not seeking
permission from the students’ parents to record classes; instead, the principals of each
school gave me permission to video record classes. In the end, permission from the
principals was acceptable because 1) receiving permission from parents would be too
onerous on the teachers and 2) video recording of classes was common practice in the
schools.
Even with the principals’ consent, it was necessary to ensure that students’ privacy
would not be compromised, I wrote in the consent form that I would seek approval by the
school before showing any video in a conference and blur out the faces of the students
and teachers. Also, I promised that all undistorted video would be erased within two years
of termination of the project, and it has. Video recordings were used solely by me to
accurately recreate classroom scenes which comprised the CIs of this study, and have not
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been made available to anyone else. Overall, I have found that the “thick description”
provided in the CIs can provide a sufficiently vivid portrayal of the classroom reality.
5.52 Ethical Issues Arising During the Study
Kubanyiova (2008) argues that macroethical principles (i.e. respect for persons,
beneficence, and justice) can be insufficient to address situational concerns in the field.
Researchers need to be aware of microethical principles too, so that they pay attention to
ethical issues as they occur in the field. Kubanyiova (2008) points out that prioritizing the
welfare of the participants could jeopardize the researcher being able to make a theoretical
contribution to the field. This was typified by an unexpected issue that arose with one
research participant, Yuta, who left the study before the other two participants. This issue
became apparent during a post-class discussion among Yuta, Fujita Sensei, his teaching
mentor, and me. A transcription of this discussion is given in Extract 5.5.1.
Extract 5.5.1 An Ethically Important MomentY: And today, [Administrator A and B] came. 1
F: But, Yuta, it seems that you are really worried when the 2
[administrators] or Hall Sensei come to see your class. 3
You know, I think you should just show them your normal 4
class. Especially with Hall Sensei, he’ll help you out, 5
so just show your normal class. Actually, Yuta, you 6
think that you need to show [Administrator A] a good 7
class, don’t you? 8
Y: Always. 9
F: You don’t have to worry so much.10
Yuta states that there were two administrators at his school who would routinely
watch his classes and give him feedback. This was causing him to be anxious. I was aware
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of this specific tension. However, in lines 2 to 3, Fujita Sensei grouped me together with
the administrators as those making Yuta uneasy. I did not grasp that my presence might
have been an issue until I transcribed and analyzed the interview, which was months after
Yuta left the study. My dilemma was whether or not to discard the data. Ultimately, I
decided to keep them, because I felt that Yuta’s case showed both the positive and
negative effects of supervisor feedback. This will be explained further in Section 7.3.4.
Lastly, although Yuta agreed with me in principle, that I could record his classes and
audio record the interviews. I realized that he was facing some trying times and out of
consideration of this, never recorded any of his classes. Furthermore, some of our
interviews were conducted under tense circumstances, and these were not recorded. This
is shown in Section 7.3.2. Therefore, throughout the study, I attempted to ensure the
welfare of the participants while also collecting data that could make a contribution to the
field. In situational research such as this study, ethical considerations are made well after
the ethics committee has given its approval and researchers should be sensitive to what
Copland and Creese (2016) called ‘microethics.’
5.6 Relating the Method to Linguistic Ethnography
This chapter has discussed the method of data collection and analysis in some detail.
The purpose has been to show that I have aimed to reconstruct the novice English teacher
experience in the most trustworthy way possible (Edge & Richards, 1998). As mentioned
in Section 2.2, the research tradition of this study falls under linguistic ethnography (LE).
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In a compilation of representative LE studies, Shaw et al. (2015) write that they share the
following characteristics.
1. Use topic-oriented ethnography: particular aspects of daily
life and cultural practices of a specific group
2. Bring together different sources of data
3. Combine linguistics with ethnography
4. Aspire to improve social life
The methodology of this study also aimed to fulfill these characteristics. First, the
topic of this study is the puzzles which first year English teachers face, the role of the
TOT in resolving them, and the evolution of the teachers’ practice as they address these
puzzles. Second, the data brought together interview transcripts and recordings,
classroom field notes, classroom transcriptions, classroom video and audio recordings,
and teaching artifacts such as worksheets, textbook pages, and test papers. Through these
different modes of data, the reality being reconstructed in the interviews can be compared
with the classroom experience captured on audio, video, and paper (field notes and class
transcripts). Third, a microanalysis of interview and in-class interaction will help us delve
deeper into how the participants and researcher reconstructed the perceived reality of
teachers’ puzzles and preferred practice. Finally, CHAT can help us develop hypotheses
as to why the teachers find success or hardships and contribute to better supporting pre-
service and recently employed teachers in Ishimoto.
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Prologue to the Findings
The next four chapters introduce the teachers and present the representative CIs of
each of the time periods for each teacher. In Chapter 6, I provide a profile of the teachers
and their schools. Each of the remaining chapters depicts a time period in the study. In
each period I have compiled CIs, which are usually classroom scenes or epiphany-like
moments in interviews that triggered understanding about the pedagogical puzzles the
teachers were grappling with, the role of the TOT in helping the teachers resolve their
issues, or the nature of the teachers’ pedagogical practices and environmental factors
which impacted these practices. Each area that the CI touches on is noted in its title.
Based on Farrell’s (2013) recommendations for using CIs in narrative reflective
practice, each CI has been divided into the following components: orientation, or a
description of pertinent information leading up to the event; event, or a description of the
actual incident, and interpretation, or “what the event means to the participants of the
story” (Farrell, 2013, p. 82). Because the CIs were identified by me, the researcher, the
interpretation is mine. However, the interpretation of an event used interview talk to
incorporate the teachers’ perspectives. In the descriptions of the CIs, the event and
interpretation are marked by subsections.
It should be noted that the above terminology is different from Farrell’s (2013). He
used orientation, complication, evaluation, and result. I chose event over complication
because the latter seems to have a negative connotation and the CIs presented here,
although sometimes negative, can best be described as learning experiences. I preferred
the term interpretation over evaluation because it seemed to better express my intention
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to elucidate the meaning of an event. Finally, Farrell (2013, p. 82) describes the Result as
explaining “the resolution to the problem/ crisis.” In this study, CIs were designed to
serve as windows into the novice English teacher experience or TOT experience and did
not necessitate a resolution. Therefore, it was not necessary to discuss the Result of a CI.
Dialogue between the participants and me as well as classroom dialogue was used
in both the descriptions and the interpretations of the CIs. The conventions in Table 6.1
were followed to compose these transcripts. Often the participants and I used a mixture
of Japanese and English in interviews, while most in-class interaction was done in
Japanese. In most cases, if possible I included the original Japanese as well as an English
translation because the original Japanese enables those readers with a background in the
language to consider the possible meanings of the words used. In addition, often the
teacher’s code-switching was instrumental in depicting a scene. Thus, including the
original Japanese lent trustworthiness to the interpretation of the scenes. In cases in which
Table 6.1. Transcription conventions
(2)
…
(xxx)
(laugh)
=
-
/Hi/
/Hello/
//Sensei!//
(( ))
[ ]
[= ]
Nihon
Sit down
Silence given in seconds
A pause of less than a second
Unintelligible speech
A nonverbal sound
A turn follows another without a pause
A turn is interrupted.
Overlapping utterances
Multiple people speaking at once
Author’s comment
One word is substituted for another
Author’s translation
Italics indicates Japanese
Bold and italics indicates an English
translation without the original Japanese
↑↓
HEY!
um°
?
< >
S:
S1, S2
Ss:
FS
MS
R, M,
Y, J
Mark changes in intonation
Part of an utterance spoken
loudly
Talk quieter than surrounding
speech
Marks a rising inflection, not
necessarily a question
An utterance spoken quickly
A student
Student 1, student 2, etc..
Students
Female student
Male student
Risa, Maiko, Yuta, James
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there was so much talk in Japanese that it would not be practical to include both the
Japanese and English, I wrote only the English translation in italics and bold. These
situations tended to be longer monologues in which the content of what was said seemed
to be more important than how it was said. Finally, there were cases in which one
Japanese word was repeatedly used in a conversation that was conducted in English. In
these instances, I would substitute the Japanese word for the English also using italics
and bold.
To indicate student interlocutors, I wrote S, for students when the gender could not
be discerned or was inconsequential, MS for male student, and FS for female students.
This was not originally planned, but in the course of the study I noticed that the difference
in behavior between male and female students necessitated noting the gender of the
student interlocutor. When a student’s name was known, I used the student’s pseudonym
and indicated their gender beforehand.
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6. A Profile of the Teachers and their Community
Ishimoto City15 is a medium-sized city with a population of about 290,000 people.
The city is the capital of Oyama, a rural prefecture16 known for its marine products,
natural attractions, and literary figures as well as home to a world-heritage site. Of 47
prefectures in Japan, Oyama prefecture has the second lowest population density. Oyama
Prefecture junior high schools are ranked among the bottom five prefectures in
standardized test scores. By contrast, standardized test scores for the prefecture’s primary
schools are ranked among the top 20 prefectures; I have observed the issue of a sudden
drop in test scores being raised at JHS teacher conferences in Ishimoto.
Ishimoto city junior high schools tend to score highly on standardized tests by
comparison with other schools in the prefecture. The city is home to the top-ranked
academic secondary schools, and there are a large number of juku or private
supplementary schools where children can receive individualized instruction. Ishimoto
has the modern conveniences of a typical city (food, shopping, cultural events, etc.), but
is small enough that almost any place is reachable by bicycle. At the time of this study, I
had been teaching at a university in the city for 11 years. It is no exaggeration to say that
when out and about, it was more common than not for me to run into someone I knew. In
short, although Ishimoto is the capital of Oyama and its biggest city, it still feels like a
small place.
15 Pseudonyms are given for the names of the prefecture, city, schools, and participants.
16 A prefecture is equivalent to a “county” in the UK.
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Ishimoto served as the setting for my investigation into the teaching lives of three
novice teachers that lasted from October 2013 to March 2015. The three teachers all had
distinct backgrounds and worked at distinct schools. However, they often taught the same
grade using the same textbook based on the same national curriculum. This provided an
opportunity to see the effect that different teachers and different school circumstances can
have on carrying out the same curriculum.
6.1 Risa at Tamai Junior High School
Risa was 23 years old and a recent university graduate in English literature. Her
exposure to the profession of teaching started when she was born. Both of her parents
were teachers but of subjects other than English. Throughout her childhood, Risa
observed “their way to work” (Interview, October 28, 2013). From JHS, her favorite
subject was English. Her high-school teacher told her that teaching English was “the best
way to use the skill which [she] studied in university” (Interview, October 28, 2013).
Risa had a “Normal English Teacher’s License” (see Table 3.1.1, Chapter 3). Aside
from the English classes she had taken, she had also spent a month in an English-speaking
country doing a homestay. Her experiences using English had a big impact on her; Risa
said that her ultimate goal as a teacher was for students to understand the interest and
value in being able to communicate in English.
Risa was employed at Tamai JHS, which was located in central Ishimoto. At the
time of the study, it had 387 students from grades seven to nine with four homerooms per
grade. There were approximately 30 students per class. In the first year of the study, Risa
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was in charge of teaching English to four classes in the second grade and also responsible
for one of the homerooms. To be a homeroom teacher in Japan means to provide guidance
to students in all aspects of their lives inside and outside school, eat lunch with them every
day, hold homeroom meetings before and after class, be available to parents any time of
the day, and write periodic homeroom newsletters for parents. The unit of social
organization in schools is arguably the homeroom. Students identify themselves as
members of a homeroom, and each homeroom has its own mottos and goals. Additionally,
in Risa’s school homerooms competed against one another in school competitions. Thus,
being a homeroom teacher is a very heavy responsibility, especially for a first-year
teacher.
Overall, Risa’s workload and duties were no different from those of a veteran teacher.
In the second year of this study, Risa taught the first grade and was again responsible for
one of the homerooms. In both years, Risa taught approximately 16 lessons a week in
addition to discharging her daily duties as a homeroom teacher, coaching the badminton
club, and chairing a school committee. It should be noted that clubs typically hold practice
at least six days a week, and the teacher must attend.
6.2 Maiko at Shirakawa Junior High School
The second teacher, Maiko, was 32 years old when this study began. She first
became interested in studying English when she was a child. She had a cousin who lived
in the U.S. but could not communicate when they met. In high school, she became friends
with the international students visiting her school. She went to university and received a
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degree in English education. She also studied TESL for a year at an American university.
Previously she had taught English part-time at a private girls’ high school and at a public
JHS. In addition, she had worked as an international flight attendant. Maiko had a
‘Normal English Teacher’s License.’ Likely because of her life experiences and her life-
long motivation to learn and use English, she was highly proficient in the language. Maiko
said that her goal for her students was to enable them to live and work in an international
society.
In the first year of the study, Shirakawa JHS had 451 students in the three grades,
divided into 12 homerooms with about 37 students in each one. The school is used as a
teaching practicum site by my university. It is also designated as one of three ‘research
conference schools’ in the city of Ishimoto and must hold a gakkou koukai kenkyuukai or
‘Open School Research Conference’ 17 once every three years. In my observations,
student in-class behavior at Shirakawa JHS was good compared to the other schools, and
students were more accustomed to having outsiders view their classes. Maiko taught the
first grade in her first year working at the school, but did not have to supervise a
homeroom. She taught 16 lessons a week, like Risa, and was a co-coach of the school’s
track and field team. In her second year, she served as a first-grade homeroom teacher
and continued to have 16 lessons a week as well as club activities. As a homeroom teacher,
she was busier in her second year, and therefore it became more difficult for me to arrange
meetings with her.
17 ‘Research conference school’ and ‘Open School Research Conference’ are explained in
Maiko’s critical incident in Section 4.3.2.
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6.3 Yuta at Aoki Junior High School
Yuta majored in English education as both an undergraduate and Master’s student
and possessed an “Advanced English Teacher’s License” (see Table 3.1.1 in Chapter 3).
Yuta had written his undergraduate thesis on chunk reading, and his graduate thesis on
vocabulary acquisition. His prior teaching experience consisted of a two-week teaching
practice, and he had never spent significant time in an English-speaking country. When
the study began, Yuta was 25 years old. He and I never discussed his pedagogical goals
for his students.
Yuta taught at Aoki JHS, a school of 638 students in a neighborhood of Ishimoto
where I formerly lived. This was a socially mixed area; there were newly built, modern
middle-class houses, prefectural housing for low-income families, and housing for civil
servants. Students from a variety of backgrounds attended Aoki JHS, and student
behavior could be more challenging than at the other schools in this study. There were 23
homerooms in total for the three grades. Of these, two were for students with special
educational needs, and three were for children with autism or other social impairments18.
Yuta had a work load similar to Risa’s; like her, he was also in charge of a homeroom, a
club, and a committee. Yuta transferred to another school six months into this study and
18 This kind of homeroom is called jousho shougai gakkyuu or “a class for children with
various emotional difficulties.” Most children there are autistic, but some have other
disorders, the nature of which appears ambiguous. Because children in this homeroom are
cognitively capable of standard grade-level work they take largely mainstream classes, but
officially they are members of this homeroom.
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the classroom observations and interviews ended at this point. He gave me permission to
use his data.
6.4 James, the TOT
When the study began I, the researcher, was 39 years old and had been living in
Japan for 15 years. I was (and am) a US national, but my only teaching experience had
been in Japan. I had been a teacher of teachers or TOT at a Japanese education university
in Ishimoto City for 11 years. In the previous four years, I had served as an ‘Assistant
Language Teacher’ (ALT) at a JHS, studied English education as a research student at a
Japanese Graduate School of Education, and taught as a part-time high-school English
teacher on the northern island of Hokkaido.
My wife is Japanese (from Hokkaido), and we have three children for whom
Ishimoto is home. Although I have a strong foreign accent and my writing and speaking
can be awkward, I can read, write, speak, and listen to Japanese for work, academic, and
personal purposes without much difficulty. It can be said that the novice teachers and I
were both members of the same professional community and there were many things we
took for granted such as textbook content, system of teacher training, and way of teaching
and learning in schools. Thus, one of the challenges for me in this study was to fulfill a
primary purpose of ethnography: to “make the familiar anthropologically strange”
(Delamont, 2009, p. 59).
My educational philosophy is that good teachers are those who understand the basics
about language learning and teaching and have their own unique motive and mission.
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Good teachers, I believe, care about their students’ learning and want them to experience
the intrinsic value of learning their subject. My mission is to help aspiring teachers
develop into this kind of person. From my own research (Hall, 2014b) and experiences
in teaching and working with teachers, I have come to believe that the ideal type of foreign
language teaching should be tailored to fit the local context but should also be in harmony
with a loose interpretation of CLT. This view has had a tremendous influence on how I
support pre-service and in-service teachers.
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7. Period 1: We are all novices (October 2013 – March 2014)
When I first began to observe the teachers, I was not sure what role to take in the
lessons or during our interviews. During the lessons I waivered, sometimes being an
observer and sometimes a participant in the lessons. In the interviews, I was unsure
whether I should assume the role of the researcher or the advisor. In addition, my means
of data collection were changing, not yet set into a routine. Although the teachers had
agreed to let me film their classes, I did not feel comfortable doing so because I had yet
to develop a relationship with them and their students. At first, my data collection for the
classes consisted of field notes and collecting artifacts, but from November it evolved to
audio recordings, which I later transcribed.
Period 1 started when all three teacher-participants were six months into their first year
of teaching. Both Risa and Yuta were teaching the second grade and using the same
textbook, Sunshine 2 (Kairyudo, 2011b); they were also homeroom teachers. Maiko, on
the other hand, was not a homeroom teacher and was teaching the first grade, using
Sunshine 1 (Kairyudo, 2011a). Accordingly, in theory Maiko would have more time to
concentrate on her classes.
All teachers received weekly in-service development in the form of training from
the Board of Education (BOE). Once or twice a week, a BOE-appointed teaching mentor
would go to each teacher’s school, watch the teacher’s classes or team-teach with the
teacher, and give him or her advice. The mentor was a veteran teacher, Fujita Sensei19.
19 Sensei means ‘teacher’ in Japanese. Anyone who was given the title “Sensei” had a high
status from both my perspective and the teachers’ perspective.
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All the teachers reported that Fujita Sensei would provide them with useful ideas for
classroom activities. She would also give a weekly seminar about all aspects of being a
teacher, such as how to hold conferences with parents or conduct a moral education class.
In addition to their sessions with Fujita Sensei, the teachers were required to attend three
training seminars conducted by the prefectural BOE. These gave them a chance to talk
with other first-year English teachers and get ideas from them. As part of their training,
the teachers had to conduct research and present it in January 2014. Risa had decided to
present about using music in warm-up activities to spark students’ interest. Yuta had
decided to research the use of Q & A as a warm-up activity. Maiko was doing research
on vocabulary learning.
In this period, I identified puzzles and pedagogical styles for each teacher that would
remain throughout the period of the study. For both Risa and Yuta, the primary puzzles
were student management and how to develop their own style of teaching. Maiko’s
puzzles involved implementing national and school-wide objectives into her instruction.
Maiko’s pedagogical practice was marked by a basic class structure, solidified from the
beginning, that never changed. Risa had established a way to teach reading that remained
throughout the study. Yuta routinely demonstrated his effective lecturing skills. Period 1
was different from the others in that I frequently assumed the participant-observer role in
the teachers’ lessons in order to try to help them with student management. In the second
and third periods (Chapters 8 and 9, respectively), I would rarely assume such a role. This
chapter shows what was learned by spending Period 1 with Risa, Maiko, and Yuta.
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7.1 Understanding Risa’s practice and perspectives
I started Period 1 with Risa by attempting to understand her practice and the reasons
behind it. After the first month, I gave her advice and attempted to provide her with
support. CIs 1 and 2 exemplify the type of pedagogical practices I observed throughout
the study as well as, in the case of CI 1, a prevalent puzzle. CIs 3 and 4 represent formative
experiences in my learning how to be a TOT for Risa. CI 5 shows me experiencing a
writing class from Risa’s perspective.
7.1.1 CI 1R Puzzles and Practice: Conflicting principles and practice (November 18,
2013)
At the beginning of the study, as someone who had previously researched how pre-
service and novice teachers interpret and practice CLT (Hall, 2014b; Hall & Townsend,
2017), I was instinctively interested in the extent to which teachers could teach a
communicative class. Earlier, when I asked Risa her motivation for teaching, she
responded as shown in Extract 7.1.1:
Extract 7.1.1 Risa’s classroom goals (October 28, 2013)
R: Simply to say. I want them to enjoy or have fun using English or 1
learning English. I, I enjoyed. I thought that English, 2
learning English is very fun when I was students. I hope that 3
they also feel the same... It's very hard but because I liked 4
English very much. But I don't want to completely feel fun. 5
Not, not.. nandarou [= I wonder…]. A little is ok so each time, 6
each English time I want them to feel oh English is interesting 7
or fun... A little is ok. I want them to feel like they want to 8
use English9
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What Risa articulated above mirrors the types of aspirations my own student-
teachers have for their English teaching: they want to provide students with an
opportunity to use English and want them to enjoy the class (Hall et al., 2016). However,
as discussed in Section 3.4, CLT-inspired teaching has not been adopted by most teachers
in Japan. The classroom scene described below became a CI to me because of the
contradictions I observed between her teaching aspirations and practice. On the one hand,
Risa’s presentation style demonstrated she was trying to create a good atmosphere for the
class, and she was enjoying good-spirited interaction with the students. On the other hand,
Risa could not provide students with the opportunity to use English even when that was
the goal of the activity.
In this CI, Risa was attempting to practice comparatives (e.g. James is taller than
Mike) in what she termed as the “warm-up” stage of the class. It should be noted that
typically English teacher education programs in Japan teach students to begin the lesson
with a warm-up activity which involves small talk such as asking about the weather or
the day. This is usually followed by review in which students briefly practice previously
learned language items (This is the style explained in the teaching practicum handbook:
Yoneyama et al., 2013). Risa’s interpretation of warm-up seemed to be equivalent to
‘review.’ I have noticed that other teachers (myself included) often interpret warm-up as
serving the same purpose as review.
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7.1.1.1 CI 1R Event
Before the warm-up, Risa had pasted a picture of the Sazae family (See extract 7.1.2),
from a popular cartoon, on the board. Her plan was to compare the characters in the
television show. Extract 7.1.2 shows a picture of the Sazae family and the interaction that
ensued. First, Risa introduced the comparative structure to the students and wrote,
“Wakame is taller than Tarao” on the board.” The scene below begins when she has
students repeat the sentence she had written.
Extract 7.1.2 Warm-up for practicing comparatives
R: ((Pointing to the characters)) Wakame is taller than Tarao. 1
Okay? Ii desu ka [=Is everyone ready?]。Okay, then please 2
repeat after me. 3
Ss: Wakame is taller than Tarao. 4
R: Ato Wakame to Tarao wo kurabete. Nenrei ha dou desuka. [=Okay, 5
let’s compare Wakame and Taro. How about their age?] 6
MS1: Nenrei ha [= For age] 7
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R: Un. 8
MS1: Tarao no hou ga. [=Tarao is] 9
MS: Ha, ha((Short laugh)) 10
R: Tarou no hou ga [=Tarao is] 11
MS1: Ue [= Above] 12
R: Ue? [= Above?] 13
MS: Ha, ha, ha ((Short laugh)) 14
R: Shita da yo ne [= Below, right?] Shita to iu koto ha … WAKAI. 15
Wakai ha nan to iu no. [= Below is… WAKAI. Wakai is…] 16
Ss: /Young./ 17
R: Young demo [=but] 18
Ss: //Younger.// 19
R: //Konkai ha WAKAME chan// HA to iu kara [=Because we are 20
talking ABOUT WAKAME.] 21
Ss: //Older.// 22
R: //Sou sou,// Wakame chan ha Tarao chan yorimo OLDER desu yo 23
ne. [=Yes, yes, Wakamae is OLDER than Tarau] ((Risa writes 24
“Wakame chan is older than Tarao” on the board.)) 25
R: Ja kore mo ikimashou. [=Okay, let’s go with this.] Wakame is 26
OLDER than Tarao. Hai [=Go ahead]. 27
Ss: ((Repeating)) /Wakame is older than Tarao./ 28
R: Ja, kondo ha, Masao san, Masao san wo dare ka to kurabemasu? 29
[=Okay, next, Mr. Masao, Mr. Masao, who should we compare him 30
with?] 31
S: Sazae-san32
The purpose of this exercise was for students to practice the comparative structure,
“A is -er than B.” However, students did not produce this sentence structure on their own.
In Lines 5 to 15, Risa had a dialogue with MS 1 in which they needed to confirm that
Tarao is younger than Wakame in Japanese even though the picture was before them and
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the students were likely familiar with the characters. In Lines 10 and 14, a male student
laughed at this interaction. This kind of behavior on the part of the boys in Risa’s classes
would become typical throughout the study; a boy or two would feign ignorance and
others would laugh. Eventually, Risa was successful in eliciting comparative words but
students did not produce the comparative sentences by themselves. In fact, Risa elicited
from the students in Japanese the factual part of the picture, that Tarao is indeed younger
than Wakame, as well as the comparative word, so that she could then give them the
sentence in Japanese. In summary, this class scene seemed to indicate that students were
reticent to use English, but not to interact with the teacher, and Risa was not
interactionally managing the class in a way that would encourage students to
communicate in English using the target structures. Every original English sentence was
produced by Risa. How to get students to practice and meaningfully use target structures
would be a prevalent puzzle for Risa throughout the study. .
7.1.1.2 CI 1R Interpretation
A week after the class, on November 25, 2013, I met with Risa. I was interested in
exploring the gap between Risa’s ideal, students communicating in her class, and Risa’s
practice. In the meeting, we discussed her rationale for warm-up activities and what she
considered to constitute communication. I also showed her a rough transcript of her
warm-up and asked her to comment on it.
Risa was experimenting with warm-up activities as part of her required research
project for her first-year teacher training. She would be submitting a report on this and do
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a presentation the following January. Extract 7.1.3 shows Risa’s rationale for the warm-
up activities.
Extract 7.1.3 Risa’s rationale for conducting warm-up
R: And, I want them to, nandakke [=What can I say]、 I want them to 1
feel, think. I want to do ((laugh)) I want to do more... I want 2
to study English… I want, I want to make them feel… It is 3
difficult to explain in English. 4
J: You can say it in Japanese if you want. 5
R: I want to see if warm-up is effective for raising students’ 6
willingness [to participate in] the class. 7
J: Okay 8
R: It can serve as a means of transition for students from another 9
class to English, also, if there is something that students do 10
not understand, through games or review, if they are able to 11
understand [abbreviated], then, together with review, perhaps, 12
their motivation for the class will increase. This is what I am 13
thinking now ((laughs)). 14
Here, Risa articulated her hope that warm-up would help students understand the
classroom content better and increase their motivation to participate. Although Risa was
conducting the warm-up in Japanese, the way she focused on getting students to say the
comparative word in Extract 7.1.2 and praised students when they said it seemed to
indicate that she was offering some students remedial help in comparatives. Still, I could
not stop thinking about the contradiction between Risa’s desire for students to
communicate in English and her pedagogical practice. Therefore, I asked her what she
considered communicative competence to be.
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Extract 7.1.4 Communicative competence according to Risa
J: You know, the [Course of Study] says communication nouryoku 1
[=competence]. What for you is communication nouryoku? 2
R: Ah, communication nouryoku, I think that is, that is trying to 3
tell something to, to others. 4
J: Okay 5
R: If they can't but if they try, I think it's okay. It, it, it's 6
not enough maybe but I think it's okay to communicate. 7
I used the Japanese word for competence, nouryoku, so that Risa would give me an
interpretation of the term written in the Course of Study (national curriculum). Risa’s
answer served to deepen the puzzle. If communication nouryoku is the ability “to tell
something to […] others”, I wondered why she was not encouraging students to use the
language more. I asked Risa how she could raise students’ communicative competence.
Extract 7.1.5 What Risa can do to raise students’ communicative competence
R: Ah, nandarou [= I wonder] ((She pauses)) To raise, uh, 1
communicating ability. Ah, So, ummmm, komyunike-shon nouryoku 2
wo ageru tame, nandarou? [= How can I raise communicative 3
competence?]. Usually, I want them to express their own or… 4
J: Express their what? 5
R: Their own. Their own. Themselves even in their writing. Or, 6
so, if it is easy or short. It is important to raise their 7
ability I am thinking. 8
J: Okay, okay, so you want them to express themselves in writing? 9
R: Yes, is short is ok. Or sometimes Q & A activities in warm-up, 10
I did. So, it is also good to raise their ability, I think. 11
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It's very short one but. 12
J: So, in your class the time where students can express 13
themselves is during warm-up? 14
R: Or, in this textbook writing part. 15
J: In the writing part. 16
R: Or, sometimes ‘let's try.’17
Risa eventually stated her belief that was important to give students brief
opportunities to express themselves. However, the chances for students to express
themselves were limited to writing (Line 6), Q & A activities in warm-up (Line 10), and
the Let’s try activities (Line 17) in the textbook (Let’s try activities will be explained in
detail in Chapter 7.). Q & A activities during warm-up were the only communicative
activities done by Risa outside the textbook, and they were suggested to her by Fujita
Sensei. I would later learn that the concept of writing as a means for students to express
themselves also came from Fujita Sensei. This seemed to indicate that Risa used other
people’s ideas and textbook activities to encourage students to communicate. In terms of
teaching communicative activities, Risa was in Edge’s (2011) dimension of ‘being
methodological’: she could copy other people’s styles.
When I showed Risa a transcript of her warm-up activity (Extract 7.1.6). I was
interested in learning if she felt she was accomplishing the pedagogical goal mentioned
in Extract 7.1.1, that students “feel the fun of using English.”
Extract 7.1.6 Identifying the problem with the warm-up
J: So, what do you think about this warm-up? 1
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R: Ummm, maybe, I talked too much. I told them too much. I had to 2
make them think, think. Ah, for example, short will be change. 3
I said the answer shorter. I need to make them say that. And, 4
the comparing point. For example, age, height, but I told them 5
that let's compare the height or age so I needed to make them 6
think more. I told too much. 7
J: I understand that when the students are quiet, you know, 8
hanashite shimau [=we tend to talk]. 9
R: Yeah 10
In Lines 2 to 7, Risa identified the same problems I did: students were not given a
chance to think for themselves. In fact, in future situations like this in which I showed
Risa transcripts of her teacher-to-class talk, she could recognize problematic areas in her
interactional management. A recurrent puzzle for Risa was how to manage the class in a
way that would encourage the students to use the language. At this stage, Risa was relying
on Fujita Sensei’s suggestions and the textbook for conducting communicative activities.
It did not seem that Risa had developed her own techniques for encouraging students to
communicate.
7.1.2 CI 2R Practice: Meaningless meaningful content (October 18, 2013)
In CI 2R, Risa tried to engage her class in a meaningful discussion of the day’s
textbook reading passage but did not have success. A tenet of CLT is that “authentic and
meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities” (Richards &
Rodgers, 2001, p. 172). In its brochure, the publisher of the textbook (Kairyudo, 2016)
emphasized that the aim of the book was to develop the characters of the students by
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choosing content which would help them consider how people lived their lives as well as
promote respect for work and hope for peace. As representative content in the brochure,
the publisher showed the very page that Risa was using. The reading was about Severn
Suzuki, an environmental activist, who at the age of 12 gave a speech to world leaders at
the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro imploring them to make protecting the environment
a priority.
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7.1.2.1 CI 2R Event
When I watched Risa teach the reading class to Grade 2, Homeroom A on October
22, I was interested in how she might address the content of the reading text with the
students. Figure 7.1.1 shows the textbook page (Kairyudo, 2011b, p. 65) as well as the
worksheet she created with some parts translated by me. It also indicates that the reading
aloud exercises, comprehension questions, and writing activity were carried over from
the textbook into the worksheet.
The class revolved around the worksheet and textbook page, and Risa conducted the
class passing through the steps shown in Extract 7.1.7. It took 50 minutes for Risa to
complete up to step 12.
Figure 7.1.1 Reading on Severn Suzuki and corresponding worksheet
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Extract 7.1.7 Steps in Risa’s reading lesson Step 1: Risa shows a picture of Severn Suzuki. She asks students if they know who
she is. Then she tells the goal of the class in Japanese, “Let’s understand what kind of person Severn Suzuki is.”
Step 2: Risa gives an oral introduction about Severn Suzuki. Using pictures, she recites the textbook page shown in Figure 7.1.1. Students have their books closed.
Step 3: Students listen to the audio track of the text while Risa shows the pictures. Students keep their textbooks closed.
Step 4: Risa asks students what they understood and receives no answer. Step 5: Risa plays the CD again while students look at the textbook page. She says
the Japanese translation while the CD plays. Step 6: Risa introduces new words. This takes approximately 10 minutes. Step 7: The class reads the text aloud. Step 8: Risa reviews “important expressions” (number 3 on the worksheet), and
students fill in the blanks. Step 9: Students summarize the main points in Japanese (number 4 on the
worksheet) Step 10: Students do reading aloud practice (number 5 on the worksheet). They are
supposed to read aloud until they can do so smoothly. Risa tells them they should practice reading aloud at home.
Step 11: Students answer two comprehension questions in English (number 6 on the worksheet).
Step 12: Risa asks students to express their thoughts about Severn Suzuki's message on how to save the earth (e.g. "We must change our lifestyles."). Students do not respond.
Step 13: Using the day’s key structure, students write “When I was (age), I started -ing.” Risa did not have enough time to get to this activity.
Risa attempted to engage the students in meaningful interaction about the reading
content (Step 4) and its message (Step 12), but it was not effective. To elaborate, in Steps
1 to 4, Risa seemed to be trying to attract students’ interest in the story by first introducing
the goal as learning about Severn Suzuki and then reading the textbook passage herself
two times using visuals. When Risa asked students what they understood after all this,
they gave no answer (Step 4). In Step 12, which required students to express what Severn
Suzuki’s message meant to them, there was also no response. In Steps 6 to 11, which
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focused on understanding the language and content of the reading as well as reading aloud,
most students participated by either filling out the worksheet or reading aloud as asked.
7.1.2.2 CI 2R Interpretation
To me, CI 2R was an indication that any kind of meaningful interaction about the
textbook content, which seemed to be promoting the value of altruism, was not feasible.
Drawing on the data and on classrooms observations I would suggest there are two
overriding reasons for the lack of discussion. First, Risa prioritized comprehension and
reading aloud over discussion. Second, much of the content from the textbook seemed
difficult to discuss for beginning English learners.
Regarding the first point, Risa and I never spoke directly about this particular reading
class; however, in subsequent interviews and observations over the course of this study I
learned that the oral introduction, summarizing the reading in Japanese by filling in the
blanks (Part 4 of the worksheet in Figure 7.1.1), and reading aloud were standard practice
for Risa. Fujita Sensei had taught Risa the technique of providing a summary of the
reading with blanks for the students to fill in, and Risa felt it was very useful for getting
the students to understand the main point of the reading.
Risa articulated her style when we discussed her plan for a reading class on February
27, 2014. Before the conversation shown in Extract 7.1.8, Risa had said she wanted
students to listen to the female voice in the audio recording.
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Extract 7.1.8 Risa’s way of teaching reading
R: And imagine what is she talking about. What is the cd talking 1
about. And then, look at the textbook. And, then, tracing the 2
lines with their fingers and pens. Then listen again. Then, 3
after that, check the news words. then do this worksheet and 4
then answer this questions. 5
J: OK. OK. 6
R: Then, after that ondoku[=reading aloud]. Then practice because 7
it's very important to ondoku for this section. 8
When we discussed how to teach reading, Risa focused on ways to help students
understand the content and language of the text and the importance of reading aloud.
Interestingly, her reading classes never included silent reading. To Risa, the act of reading
seemed to constitute reading aloud. In an interview on November 25, 2013, when I asked
her if she could describe something about her teaching that is unique, she mentioned
ondoku or reading aloud. This is shown in Extract 7.1.9.
Extract 7.1.9 Risa’s method of reading aloud
R: I don't know if that is the uniqueness but I want them to read 1
aloud the sentences more. So, I usually, I usually do ondoku 2
[= reading aloud] 3
J: OK. So you usually do ondoku. Do you have various styles of 4
ondoku? 5
R: Ah, aha, usually just, Nandarou [= I wonder]、usually just 6
practice the to read the whole sentences and after that some 7
students make happyou [=Presentation]. 8
J: OK, practice reading as a class or individually? 9
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R: Ah yes, first, buzz reading↑and all, all of the students 10
stand up and I give them, for example, one minutes or three 11
minutes, during that time they will buzz reading and after 12
that individually.13
In Line 10, the rise in intonation after the term “buzz reading” is an implicit question
about whether I know what the term means. Buzz reading is a common technique used
by JHS teachers in Japan (Tajiri, 2017) in which students read aloud individually in a
quiet voice. When a large class of students does this, it creates a buzzing sound. In
addition, in a typical Sunshine textbook reading lesson, students are directed to read the
textbook page aloud five times (This textbook exercise is indicated by the purple box in
Figure 7.1.1.). Therefore, Risa’s reading classes were focused on students’
comprehending and reading aloud the text. Reading aloud repeatedly and correctly
seemed to be one of the primary techniques of Risa’s class. From my observations and
interviews, it seemed that discussing the content was secondary to comprehension and
reading aloud.
Regarding the appropriateness of the textbook content, much of the textbook
covered environmental problems or told stories of compassionate, selfless people. This
was probably in line with the aforementioned textbook goal of selecting content to serve
as a means of character-building. In a reading class I observed toward the end of the study
(February 13, 2015), students read the following story. In the scene, Mr. Sato, a JHS
teacher, secretly goes to his classroom to see why his student Aika always comes early.
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Early one morning, Mr. Sato went to his classroom and saw Aika
inside. He didn’t speak to her. He just waited outside.
In the room, she stood near the vase.
She said, “Thank you, my dear flowers. Did you have a happy life
here? Together with you, we always had a beautiful time. Thank you
so much!” (Kairyudo, 2011a, p. 121)
According to Bao (2015), Japanese silence can be attributed to cultural values such
as modesty or politeness, student factors such as anxiety, or instructional factors such as
uninteresting content. Returning to the event in CI 2R, when students responded in silence
to Risa’s question about the meaning of Severn’s message, one reason for the silence was
likely the textbook content itself. To me, the moral tones of much of the reading in the
textbook made it difficult to discuss, especially for beginning learners of English.
7.1.3 CI 3R TOT: Giving unsolicited advice (October 28, 2013)
This CI involved my trying to give Risa some explicit advice about reading aloud
techniques and occurred in an interview on October 28, 2013. In the reading class
described in CI 2R, I had observed Risa conduct a lot of ondoku (reading aloud). In the
class, the purpose of the ondoku was not clear to me, and Risa did not seem to know
ondoku techniques which might encourage students to process the content and language
of the reading.
Ondoku is a popular method of teaching English at Japanese junior high schools and
is used for reading comprehension, learning vocabulary and grammar, and pronunciation
practice (Yasugi, 2010). Usually, various techniques of ondoku are used in succession,
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from simple reading to more cognitively challenging work. For example, Ondoku can
start with simply repeating after the teacher but progress to reading the text with some
lines covered with pencils, which means that the learner must recite those lines. When
the various techniques are used well together increasing in difficulty, I have found ondoku
to be effective for students to process the meaning of the text and understand its grammar
and vocabulary while keeping them engaged.
7.1.3.1 CI 3R Event
I thought that I could impart some of my know-how to Risa. For the interview, I
prepared to demonstrate some ondoku techniques I had used in my own classes. Below is
an extract of the interaction.
Extract 7.1.10 James’ first explicit advice to Risa (October 28, 2013)
J: Now, zenzen mushi shitemo ok desu [=It is completely ok to 1
ignore me]. This is something I have done with students. My 2
idea came from this book. 3
((JAMES shows RISA the book from which he got the ondoku idea 4
and then a worksheet with English text on the left half and 5
corresponding Japanese text on the right. He then shows her 6
five ways to use this worksheet to give students practice in 7
reading aloud and understanding the meaning of the text. The 8
explanation takes approximately five minutes.)) 9
J: ((After finishing)) Zenzen tsukawanakutemo ii desu [= You do 10
not have to use this] 11
R: No, it's very good. 12
J: ((JAMES hands RISA photocopied pages of the book.)) I don't 13
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use this exactly. Konomama tsukatte inai kedo, kore wo yonde, 14
nanika, kore ni motoduite jibun no aideia, iroiro shikou 15
sakugo wo shite, jibun no sutairu ga dekita. [Risa] mo onaji 16
desu [=I do not use this exactly, but I have read this and 17
based on it come up with my own idea, and through some trial 18
and error, make my own style. You can do the same]. 19
R: Oh, thank you so much. That is useful. 20
7.1.3.2 CI 3R Interpretation
In the interaction, I hedged my advice by telling her it was fine to ignore what I was
about to tell her (Line 1). Furthermore, after my long explanation, I told her she did not
have to use the idea (Line 10). In Line 12, she assured me that my idea was very good.
After that, I suggested that she could adapt the idea to her teaching as I had, and she
expressed gratitude. According to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) “face-saving” theory of
politeness the greater the social distance of the speaker and hearer and the greater the
relative power of the speaker over the hearer, the more politeness is used in conversation.
The level of politeness on my part was evidently high, and Risa also responded very
graciously to my advice. This interaction seems to show that there was a sizeable degree
of social distance between Risa and me at this point in the study.
Section 4.3.2 argued that mentorship in the feedback event can be effective when
the supervisor and teacher jointly identify issues (Bailey, 2006). This CI taught me that
the TOT can only give advice if the teacher is ready or if, through dialogue, the TOT can
help the teacher become aware of an area of her class that could be enhanced. In this CI,
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Risa had not indicated in the interview that ondoku was an issue for her. In fact, in the
ensuing interview on November 25, 2013, Risa would tell me that ondoku was one of the
unique features of her class. From Risa’s perspective, I was giving her unnecessary advice.
Therefore, I needed to learn how to create the conditions conducive to collaboration.
7.1.4 CI 4R TOT: Failing to be a Collaborator (December 17, 2013)
On December 17, 2013, Risa conducted a writing class, and I took an active role
working with students individually. Because of this, the essence of our interview talk after
the class changed as we became partners, focusing more on puzzles Risa had in teaching
writing and how to resolve them. CI 4R was an incident that occurred in our post-class
conversation. The incident was critical in that it represented one of my own worst
moments in holding a post-class conference, because I dominated the talk in my
misguided enthusiasm to discuss the issues.
On this day, Risa was teaching Grade 2 Homeroom A, and the goal of the lesson
was to write about which was better: summer or winter vacation. There were
approximately 30 students attending, and Risa had requested that I assist her in helping
the students with their writing. The writing activity was highly structured: students wrote
a guided outline and then the actual short essay. In the class, I was surprised by how many
students literally did not lift a pen to write without receiving help, encouragement, or
orders from the teachers.
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7.1.4.1 CI 4R Event
In the post-class interview, I wanted to discuss why so many students were unwilling
to write and how this could be resolved. First, I offered my analysis about the types of
students I observed in the class. I could see four categories of students: (A) those that can
write and will; (B) those that can write but choose not to; (C) those that can write with
help; and (D) those that struggle to write and will not respond to help. After that, Risa
discussed why writing instruction was challenging for her. The first reason she gave was
that more students needed help than she could handle. Extract 7.1.11 shows the ensuing
interaction.
Extract 7.1.11 Discussing issues experienced in the writing class
J: Challenges of writing classes. One, you mentioned, um, you know, 1
you are by yourself, right, and you have to help all the 2
students. That's one challenge. What's another challenge? One 3
of you, many students to help. What would you say is another 4
challenge for doing writing? 5
((Abbreviated))
R: Maybe I can make them= 6
J: =Right 7
R: I can make them= 8
J: =So I 9
R: I /can/ 10
J: /(xxx)/ 11
R: I can make them teacher for their - 12
J: -Ah! OK. Oh, so you are already talking solution. 13
R: Un°. 14
J: Solution, alright, so (…) make, like, “A Students” teachers 15
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((James is writing down the solution)).
R: Un°. (3) 16
J: Okay, I see. (…) Okay. What's another solution? 17
R: U:n, make a pair of group. And, teach, uh, tell help each other 18
in pair or group. 19
J: Okay. 20
R: But, it's my. It maybe a little noisy. ↓ 21
J: /Ahhhh./ 22
R: /Un./ 23
J: Could be noisy.↓ 24
R: Un°. 25
J: Okay, (2) okay. (5). Any, any other, any other possible 26
solutions you can think of? 27
R: Solutions?° Unnnn. (4) I have no idea.(laughs) 28
J: Okay. 29
S: Sorry.30
This interaction was done in the typical classroom discourse style of Initiation,
Response, Feedback (IRF) (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). In Lines 6 to 11, I think that
Risa will give a response to my request of her to brainstorm problems she encounters in
a writing class. Risa’s “response,” though, is to propose a solution to the problem (Line
7) (Even although she is competing for the floor with me while giving her response, she
speaks at normal volume). When she finally is able to begin to utter the solution, I did not
expect it and indicated that to her with my response, the token “Ah!” (Line 13) and my
utterance, ‘you are already talking solution’, suggesting she was not behaving according
to the script I had imagined for this interaction. This was my “feedback” to which Risa
offers a very meek confirmation token in Line 14. In Line 15, I complete her statement,
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make the “A students,” or the students who are good writers, help others. Risa gives
another meek confirmation token in Line 16, which is followed by an uncomfortable 3-
second silence, suggesting that I took her turn away from her and she could not contribute
until the next ‘initiation.’
In Line 17, I begin another ‘initiation.’ This time, I attempt to adjust my script to
Risa’s and ask her for further solutions. Risa gives a solution in a normal voice (Lines 18
– 19). In Line 21, she talks about potential problems with the solution. This was an
opportunity to discuss the solution in more detail about how the issue of noise could be
addressed when having students work together. However, in Line 22, my “Ahhh”
indicates surprise. In fact, I did not expect Risa to say this; my expectation was that we
would brainstorm solutions, and I could not deviate from my intention to brainstorm
either problems or solutions. In Line 24, I repeat her utterance with falling intonation.
When I later listened to the falling intonation in the recording, it sounded like I was
expressing disappointment. This is followed by another meek confirmation token (Line
25) and then silence (Line 26) which I fill with some “okays.” In Lines 26 to 27, I return
to the initiation, brainstorming solutions. Risa quietly admits that she cannot give any
more responses and then apologizes.
7.1.4.2 CI 4R Interpretation
Although this was supposed to be a collaborative post-class discussion, the extract
shows that I could not stop from pursuing my own agenda and failed to listen to Risa’s
answers. In Section 4.3.1, I suggested that often the teacher and supervisor enter the
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feedback event with the expectation that the discussion will be managed by the supervisor.
The problem here was not therefore the IRF style of the discussion but rather my failure
to recognize her answers. Section 4.3.3 presented possible TOT and teacher working
styles using Edge’s (2011) framework (refer to Figure 4.3.1). In the interaction, Risa was
given some chances to decide the classroom occurrence to examine (Framing the
experience) but was not given much opportunity to interpret it (Interpreting the picture).
Edge (2011) writes that a negative outcome of this working style is impotence as “the
learner has to accept other people’s way of making sense” (2011, p. 23). Risa’s silent
utterances and sorry at the end of Extract 7.1.11 seemed to indicate a feeling of impotence.
7.1.5 CI 5R TOT and Puzzles: Understanding Risa’s perspective (January 27, 2014)
The memory of trying to encourage uninterested students to write in the previous
class lingered with me until my next observation of Risa on January 27, 2014. I felt a
strong desire to help Risa be more successful in writing. The lesson I would observe was
for the same homeroom as CI 4R and the main activity was also writing. Before the class,
Risa asked both the school ALT, Charles, and me to assist the students in writing. This
incident was critical in that not only did I experience a class from Risa’s perspective but
also I did what a novice teacher is likely to do: address immediate problems without
thinking of the long-term impact. Furthermore, I was not giving the kind of assistance to
Risa from which she would most benefit.
In this class, students were supposed to write about a place they wanted to visit.
Beforehand, students were to have prepared an outline in Japanese consisting of: 1. The
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name of the place they wanted to visit; 2. The reason for choosing it, 3. Detailed
information about the place; 4. What they wanted to tell other people about the place.
They were also supposed to bring a picture of the place. Before the class, Risa said that
about six students had not chosen a place to write about, so to ensure that they would
write, she prepared pictures of famous places in Europe for students to choose. She asked
me to focus on helping these particular students.
7.1.5.1 CI 5R Event
Risa, Charles, and I spent the entire lesson continuously assisting students, as a result
of which that most students were able to finish. In fact, more students had finished than
in the previous class. I had observed Ami, one student who had not written an outline, at
intervals during the whole class and had not seen her working on the task. Ami had chosen
one of the pictures Risa had brought into class, the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Extract
7.1.12 shows how I assisted Ami, which typified the help I gave to other students. It also
shows the writing task from the textbook (Kairyudo, 2011b, p. 107) with an English
translation as well as the kind of picture Ami would have pasted into the book.
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Extract 7.1.12 Helping Ami
J: OK, Ami, you want me to tetsudaimasuka [= help]. OK, eranda 1
riyuu, eranda riyuu ha [=reason for choosing, your reason 2
for choosing is] nandemo ii, kirei ni mieru toka, itte mitai 3
toka. Kyoukai ga suki toka. Nandemo ii desu ga. Eranda riyuu 4
ha nan deshouka.[=Anything is fine, it looks pretty, I want 5
to go there. I like cathedrals. Anything is ok. What is your 6
reason for choosing it?] 7
A: Kirei da kara. [Because it is pretty.] 8
J: OK, so, you know. It is, it is pretty. So, it is pretty 9
((James writes down, “it is pretty” on his clipboard and 10
shows it to Ami.)). 11
J: It is pretty. Then kuwashii naiyou, kuwashii naiyou. Nandemo 12
ii desu ga, omoi ukabu mono ha nandesuka. [=Specific 13
details, specific details. Anything is ok, but what can you 14
think of?] 15
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A: (15) 16
J: Nihon no nanika otera ni kyoumi ga arimasuka. [= Do you have 17
an interest in Japanese temples?] 18
A: Amari. [= Not really.] 19
J: Amari nai↓ [= Not really↓.] Ma-, koko ni iku to sureba, 20
nani wo shitai? Tatoeba, ue made nobotte mitai toka, naka ni 21
haitte mitai toka. [= If you went there what would you like 22
to do? For example, climb up to the top? Go inside?] 23
A: (10) 24
J: Hmmmm.. (2) 25
A: Ja:, naka ni haitte mitai. [= A:lright, I want to go 26
inside.] 27
J: OK, so you can say, "I want to go inside." I want to go 28
inside ((James writes it down on his clipboard for Ami to 29
copy.)) 30
J: Saigo ni tsutaetai koto. Dare ni tsutaetai desu ka.Dare ka 31
ni kaiteiru to souzou shita hou ga ii desu ga, souzou shite 32
mitara yondeiru hito ha dare desu ka. [= Last is what you 33
want to say. Who do you want to read this essay to? I think 34
it is best to imagine who you are writing to. If you try to 35
imagine, who will you think of?] 36
A: Tomodachi [= A friend] 37
J: Tomodachi dattara, tatoeba, issho ni ikimashou toka, 38
Tatoeba. [=If it’s a friend, you can say, “let’s go 39
together,” for example.] ((James writes let’s go together on 40
the clipboard and Ami copies it.))41
When I approached Ami, there were only eight minutes remaining in the class and,
although she had chosen a place, the outline was unwritten. As we wanted to complete
the task by the end of class, I felt a sense of urgency that Ami should finish. For each item
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in her outline, I attempted to elicit an idea from Ami. Because time was limited and there
were other students who needed help, I proposed ideas that Ami could write about. All
the ideas that I proposed were spoken in Japanese. My concern was not English but rather
that Ami had not put down any ideas for her short composition even in Japanese.
Extract 7.1.12 shows me continuously providing options for three of the four
sections: reason for choosing, specific details, and what you want to say. In Line 8, Ami
chooses one option I provided for reason for choosing. In Line 24, her silence shows that
she does not have much interest in choosing any of my options for specific information.
When I lament with a worried “Hmmm” in Line 25, Ami acknowledges my effort and
chooses one of my options. It seems that this was done to appease me. When we arrive at
the last item, what you want to say, I simply write an English phrase on a clipboard and
have her copy it.
7.1.5.2 CI 5R Interpretation
One way to look at the above extract is that having other teachers assist had enabled
Risa to resolve a puzzle she was experiencing in her writing class: there were too many
students for her to assist by herself. From this perspective, the teachers benefit in that
their pedagogical goals are accomplished and Ami benefits by getting the attention she
needed. However, my intervention might have actually harmed Ami, Risa, and myself.
Ami, was able to complete the task at a satisfactory level without doing the work.
She was being asked to write about a place she seemed to have little interest in or know
anything about. In Extract 7.1.12, I repeatedly told her that she could write anything, but
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this perhaps gave her the message that, rather than writing anything of personal
significance, completing the task was most important. Furthermore, she learned that she
could complete the task with minimal effort if she exhibited minimal interest and caught
the teacher’s attention. In the end, reluctant students were identified and pushed to finish
the task with the reinforcement of the teachers. However, some students finished the task
only because in cases like Ami’s, they were told exactly what to write.
In hindsight, I would have helped Risa more had I listened to her solutions for the
issues in teaching she expressed in CI 4R and helped her implement them. Furthermore,
deeper levels of reflection such as critical reflection described in Section 4.2.1 might have
helped us consider why students like Ami had no interest in the writing and consider the
problem with the teaching materials. The type of help I gave Risa would not improve our
understanding of the puzzle of teaching writing to a large, mixed level class. By focusing
only on task completion and not reflecting on whether this really benefited the learners,
our behavior mirrored the beginning stages of teacher development discussed in Section
3.1. That is, novice teachers are focused more on completing the class than on student
learning.
7.2 Learning from Maiko
Working with Maiko was a different experience, because her classes always
proceeded smoothly and observing her enabled me to learn about effective teaching in
the JHS context. In the first CI, I learned about the rationale behind Maiko’s teaching
practice and her pedagogical puzzles. In the second CI, I failed in my response to a request
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from Maiko for advice, but this failure was formative to my developing a working
relationship with her. In the third, I learned how to interact with students thinking about
long-term goals. In hindsight, the lesson learned here could have been informative for
Risa and me in CI 5R.
7.2.1 CI 1M Practice and Puzzles: Influences on Maiko’s practice (October 9, 2013)
When I first observed Maiko’s lesson, I saw her conduct an efficient class with clear
routines. Most of the students also seemed engaged. For CI 1M, I begin by explaining the
event, which was the first class I observed. In the interpretation of the CI, I use extracts
from interviews to explain how national policy, school policy, and personal factors
affected her practice.
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7.2.1.1 CI 1M Event
The first lesson I observed was Grade 1 Homeroom B, with 38 students. The goal of
this lesson, as written on the blackboard, was mono goto wo okonau toki wo tazunareru
you ni shiyou (Be able to ask people when they do certain activities), and the target
structure was “When do you ~?”. The “menu” of the class was written on the blackboard
(Figure 7.2.1).
The class consisted of a series of seven activities. It started off with a song, which
was her way of doing warm-up. The next five activities came from the day’s textbook
page. The last activity was original and designed to have students apply the knowledge
they had acquired from the textbook lesson. This kind of activity was called a jumping
task. In this activity, students interviewed a partner about when they do certain things and
then wrote and reported the results within their groups of four (There was not enough
time to do the presentation).
Because the class was 50 minutes long and Maiko needed time for the jumping task,
the activities had to be short and conducted efficiently. Explanations of each activity were
Menu
Song
Program 7-3 [= Textbook lesson]
New words
覚えよう [=Basic Dialogue] ((from the textbook)(
聞いてみよう [=Listening] ((from the textbook))
言ってみよう [=Speaking] ((from the textbook))
使ってみよう [= Let’s Try] ((from the textbook))
インタビュープラス発表 [=Interview plus Presentation] (Jumping Task)
Figure 7.2.1 Menu for class on 10/9/2013 as written on the blackboard
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brief and in Japanese. All the textbook activities and Maiko’s original jumping task were
on worksheets given to the students. Activity instructions on the students’ worksheets
were also written in Japanese, which made me wonder if Maiko’s verbal instructions were
necessary. Maiko patrolled class with a stopwatch, sometimes dictating the time for an
activity and sometimes negotiating with students how much time they would need.
Students worked individually, in their pre-assigned pairs, or in their pre-assigned groups
of four. From my observations, all the students appeared to be on task throughout the
lesson.
Overall it was impressive to me how efficiently Maiko could complete the day’s
textbook page and then incorporate her own activity into the lesson. I was not in a position
to give Maiko any advice on her lessons as Maiko had established teaching routines that
seemed to work well and all students looked to be engaged in her class.
7.2.1.2 CI 1M Interpretation
I had my first interview with Maiko on October 22, 2013. I learned that the
instruction I had observed was a combination of her using her school’s framework, which
was influenced by national education policy, and the expertise she had acquired up until
that point. The school framework seemed to offer her support but at the same time
manifested certain pedagogical puzzles.
The system of in-class evaluation Maiko used was developed by her school but was
also derived from the national curriculum. This seemed to scaffold her teaching in that it
gave her achievement criteria for classroom learning activities. On the other hand,
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Maiko’s pedagogical puzzles also involved discerning the extent to which the criteria
were fulfilled. For each class, Maiko used the File Cards for Self-Esteem and
Metacognitive Ability, a booklet of “Reflective Self Esteem Cards” (hereafter, SE Cards)
for each lesson, which was developed by the head of the English Department, Ota Sensei.
Students would use the cards to assess and reflect on their own performance on activities.
Figure 7.2.2 shows the SE Card for the lesson Maiko taught.
An analysis of the SE Card shows that students’ self-assessment criteria were based
on the Course of Study for English (see Section 3.4). They are shown to the right of
Learning Points in Figure 7.2.2. Below, in Table 7.2.1, I have matched each of the criteria
with the corresponding objective for English in the Course of Study (MEXT, 2012, p. 1).
Main Content Use the interrogative ‘when’ in questions and answers
Lesson content Lesson 7-3: Learn to ask and answer when someone does
things
Number of periods 3 periods
Learning
Points
Interest in
Communication
Did you actively interact with your partner? A B C D
Production Could you ask questions using ‘when’ with
the correct word order?
A B C D
Comprehension Could you comprehend your friend’s
question?
A B C D
Knowledge /
understanding of
language /
culture
Do you understand the meaning and
structure of sentences using the interrogative
when?
A B C D
Figure 7.2.2 Self Evaluation Card for Sunshine 1, Lesson 7-3 (Translated by the author)
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These four criteria were also used when teachers evaluated students. Each teacher in
Oyama Prefecture was given a nationally produced evaluation manual (National Institute
for Educational Policy Research, 2011) which showed rubrics for evaluating based on the
four criteria. Furthermore, the textbook publisher (Kairyudo, 2011b) provided
downloadable charts showing how the learning of each lesson could be evaluated based
on the four criteria. In Extract 7.2.1, Maiko discussed this kind of evaluation.
Extract 7.2.1 Maiko on evaluation
M: Sometimes I am not sure if they achieved these goals so it is 1
very difficult for me to make sure that students have a 2
certain ability to use English. 3
((Abbreviated))
M: In high school, we only give paper test for reading and 4
writing. But for junior high school we have to evaluate 5
[knowledge of language and culture], comprehension, 6
[production], and are they motivated or not to use 7
English((This is interest in communication.)). I have to give 8
them A B C criteria20. The criteria is difficult. They mention 9
that this is going to be A, this is going to be B, this is 10
going to be C in the textbook so I always look at the criteria 11
20 Students evaluated themselves on the cards using criteria ranging from A – D while
teachers’ criteria for evaluating students ranged from A – C.
Table 7.2.1 Comparing SE Card Criteria to Course of Study Objectives
SE Card Criteria Course of Study Objectives
Interest in Communication Foster a positive attitude to attempt communication.
Production Develop basic communication abilities in the listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. Comprehension
Knowledge / understanding
of language / culture
Deepen the understanding of languages and cultures through
foreign language learning.
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handbook 12
Maiko expressed that it could be difficult to determine whether or not students
actually acquired the targeted skill under these criteria. She revealed that the criterion-
referenced evaluation at JHS can be more challenging for teachers to administer than HS
paper-based tests. In JHS, for each criterion, students receive a mark from A to C, with
A being “satisfactory,” B, “mostly satisfactory,” and C “needing effort” (National
Institute for Educational Policy Research, 2011, p. 5, Translated by author). Maiko said
that she had to constantly refer to evaluation as recommended in the textbook and
handbook, and it could be difficult to grasp the extent to which a student was performing
in a given criterion. For example, how does one evaluate whether a student is exhibiting
interest in communication?
Maiko’s practice had a teaching methodology and detailed evaluation criteria
established by her school which she was to follow. CI 1M, to me, showed that she was
teaching with a degree of success in this environment. Her puzzle was to get students to
meet these criteria as well as for herself to learn to use them.
7.2.2 CI 2M TOT: Wrong RP with Maiko (October 22, 2013)
The principal of Shirakawa was a former English teacher and when I asked him for
permission to conduct research at his school, he told me that he thought it would be a
good opportunity for Maiko to have deep discussions about her classes with a university
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professor. In my first interview with Maiko, I was hoping to have such a discussion. This
CI represents the first attempt to do so.
7.2.2.1 CI 2M Event
In my first interview with Maiko on October 22, 2013, I asked her if there was
anything about her classes she wanted to discuss, her response is shown in Extract 7.2.2.
Extract 7.2.2 Maiko’s attempts to initiate a discussion comparative education
J: Is there anything about your classes you wish to discuss? 1
M: Today's class? 2
J: Today's class, or, last week's class, or um- 3
M: -Ummm.° (3) Um°(4) Un° (5) Today we did this page.° 4
J: Yep. 5
M: Un.° I always wonder. ((Volume returns to normal)) You speak 6
any other languages? Well, like, Japanese, and Spanish? 7
J: Yeah, Spanish. A little bit.° 8
M: When you studied your Japanese or Spanish= 9
J: = Uh huh= 10
M: How did you study? I am always wondering, like, other 11
countries.= 12
J: =Uh huh= 13
M: = and situations. Or.° 14
J: Right. 15
M: I have studied in the states↑= 16
J: = uh huh = 17
((Abbreviated))
J: = What did you study?= 18
M: ((laugh)) Teaching, well I took some= 19
J: =uh huh= 20
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M: = Teaching English classes, TESL class↑ 21
J: Uh huh. 22
((Abbreviated))
M: I met a lot of people from Asia 23
J: Uh huh= 24
M: = And they were able to speak English so fluently = 25
J: = Uh huh = 26
M: = and they ALWAYS made a lot of mistakes but they were so 27
confident. You know. Like Chinese people, Korean people. I 28
thought what kind of English teaching program or system do they 29
have. 30
J: Yeah, you know, I think that there are probably multiple 31
factors, of course, one factor is education. 32
M: Un. 33
J: Another factor could be motivation 34
M: Un. 35
J: And, also, you know, society, their society’s attitude towards 36
language learning. And country’s history too. 37
M: Un, un. 38
J: It's all kind of complicated. 39
((Abbreviated: James talks for approximately 2 minutes about how
he studied Spanish and Japanese))
J: Yeah sorry, I am probably talking too much. There are various 40
ways to handle a text and today the way you handled the text 41
was ((Abbreviated)). Is that something you learned in your 42
TESOL program? 43
7.2.2.2 CI 2M Interpretation
In Line 4, Maiko is tasked with “framing the experience” (Edge, 2011) or
nominating the classroom occurrence to discuss. After a few seconds (Line 4), she recalls
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the textbook page I saw her teach that day, a conversation about origami among a
Japanese boy, an exchange student and a foreign teacher (Kairyudo, 2011a, p. 83). In Line
6, she seems to gain confidence as the volume of her voice increases; she is interested in
how I studied foreign languages. From her experience meeting ESL learners in the USA,
she thought that other people tended to speak with more confidence than the typical
Japanese. She was interested in learning what was different between the foreign language
education in Japan and that in other countries. Perhaps this was the kind of “deep
discussion” the principal originally alluded to. In Line 31, it is my turn to give an answer.
However, I give an academic answer influenced by a book I had recently read on context
and language teaching (Wedell & Malderez, 2013). From Line 39, I speak for two minutes
about my own experience studying Spanish at school and Japanese at university.
After this, if I had remained inside Maiko’s framework, we would have compared
my learning experience with hers and discussed the way English is taught in Japan.
Perhaps that is what Maiko wanted. However, from Line 40, I directed the conversation
to how Maiko taught her reading class. Later on, I would give Maiko feedback on how
she taught speaking. Maiko, however, was trying to discuss the wider world of TEFL.
Using Edge’s (2011) dimensions of becoming discussed in Section 4.4, Maiko was at the
dimension of intellectual, relating TESOL to the wider world, while I was at theoretical,
trying to articulate what is happening in teachers’ instruction and why, but unable to move
to intellectual.
In this interview with Maiko, the principal’s wish of having a provocative
conversation with a university lecturer was in the back of my mind. In the end, I felt an
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obligation to have a provocative discussion about Maiko’s class which, in hindsight,
prevented me from engaging in the type of dialogic talk initiated by Maiko. In this
interview, I realized that I was pursuing the wrong avenue with Maiko. I would not be
helpful to her by critiquing her teaching. I understood that our talk should be more at the
intellectual or pragmatic level. After this CI, I refrained from giving Maiko any
suggestions about her teaching for a year.
7.2.3 CI 3M Practice and Puzzles: How to work with students (February 17,
2014)
CI 3M was emblematic of two things. First, I could see how Maiko was able to use
her own principles in practice. Second, I was able to understand one puzzle she was facing
in instituting cooperative learning, which her school had mandated for all subjects.
7.2.3.1 CI 3M Event
When Maiko began her writing class on February 17, 2014, she told students to form
groups of four and for each one individually to write a diary entry about a place the student
had been. She made it clear to the students that she expected them to help each other if
they encountered problems with writing and also encouraged them to use dictionaries.
Patrolling the class, I observed students either working by themselves or doing something
other than writing; I did not see students help each other on the writing assignment as
Maiko had requested. That day, I was wearing a wireless microphone and recorded the
following conversation I had with a female student named Ana.
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Extract 7.2.3 Talking with Ana
J: Grand, I went shopping with my grandmother. My grandmother. 1
Ana: Nihongo de ii? ((=Is Japanese ok?)) 2
J: Hai [=Yes] 3
Ana: Sono ato ni, kono ie ni tomattatte nan desu ka. [=How do I 4
say, “After that, I stayed at the house?”] 5
J: Ano, obaasan no ie ni? [=Um、in your grandmother’s house?] 6
Ana: Itoko, itoko no ie. [=My cousin, my cousins’ house.] 7
J: Oh, ok. We stayed, “stayed” wo naratta? [= Have you learn 8
“stayed”?] 9
Ana: ((Gestures, likely meaning “I am not sure”)) 10
J: OK. We, we, stayed, we stayed, we stayed at. We stayed at, 11
we stayed at my cousin's house. We stayed at ((J points to a 12
female student names Marie.)) We stayed at Marie's house. We 13
stayed at, o my gosh that's difficult; we stayed at 14
((pointing to another male student in Ana’s group)) Kohei’s 15
house. We stayed at nantoka nantoka [=something, something] 16
somebody's house. 17
Ana: (20) Handobo-ru taikai de, handobo-ru no taikai wo shita 18
tte. Handobo-ru no taikai shiai wo shita tte. [=Handball 19
tournament, how do you say, “I had a handball tournament”?] 20
((James gives her the translation.)) 21
In Line 1, I approached Ana by looking over her shoulder and correcting how she
had spelled “grandmother.” Ana seemed to take advantage of this and solicited my advice
in Line 2. It felt good to be needed so I readily provided her with assistance. In Lines 11
to 17, I tried to teach Ana the structure, ‘stay at [a person’s] house,’ after I had already
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given her the answer. In Lines 18 to 19, Ana asked for another translation to which I gave
the answer.
7.2.3.2 CI 3M Interpretation
Maiko and I had an interview after this class, and there were two things I wanted to
discuss with her. First, I wanted to know, what she thought about my helping Ana, and,
also, if she felt that the students should have helped each other more. In Extract 7.2.4, I
reported to Maiko how I helped Ana.
Extract 7.2.4 Post-class discussion about Ana
J: Today, [Ana] asked me, she wanted to say, itoko no ie ni 1
tomatta [= I stayed at my cousin’s house.]= 2
M: =Yes, yes actually she finished writing. 3
J: OK, right. And so, I wanted, what I was trying to do is, like 4
I told her, um, what tomatta [=stayed] means. 5
M: un. 6
J: Stay. But I was trying to teach her, you know, we say, "stay 7
at." 8
M: uH, uh. 9
J: Nantoka, nantoka [=something, something] /somebody's, 10
somebody’s house./ 11
M: /un, un, un/° 12
J: Stay at, stay at. I am not sure if she understood that= 13
M: =un° 14
(Abbreviated))
J: Um, so I was trying to teach her to use certain prepositions 15
with certain verbs. 16
M: un, un, un° 17
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J: BUt, I'm not sure if she just copied what I said 18
M: uuuh, /uhhh/° 19
J: /and didn't think/ or if she actually realized= 20
M: =uhh, uhh= 21
J: =the rule. 22
M: She always asks the answer. You know.° 23
J: Ah ha. 24
M: She always, she doesn't always try to think /by herself/ 25
J: /ah ok/ 26
M: but, and she also asked me how do you say itoko to terebi wo 27
mimashita [=I watched TV with my cousins] in English. 28
J: Ahhh. 29
M: And, first, you have to write, watashiha ha mimashita [=I 30
watched] terebi wo [=TV] and then she wrote I watched TV 31
J: Uh huh 32
M: Next, itoko to issho ni [= with my cousins] and then she comes 33
up with. So, she knOws how to say. 34
J: Right. 35
M: But she's kind of a lazy girl. So, try to ask = 36
J: =ok= 37
M: =Somebody all the time. 38
J: Okay 39
M: But we say think or do it by yourselves, she can do it. 40
J: Oh, she can41
In Line 1, when I brought up the topic of helping Ana, Maiko immediately responded
in Line 3. To her, this seemed to be an important issue. After I told Maiko what I was
trying to teach Ana, there was a rise in intonation in Maiko’s acknowledgement token in
Line 9. When I elaborated in Lines 10 and 11, Maiko’s acknowledgement tokens
overlapped my utterance. As I continued to explain, Maiko continued to give me quick
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and quiet confirmation tokens, suggesting that she was listening intently. In Line 23,
Maiko revealed the reason why my talk about Ana struck a chord, Ana always asked for
the answer (and I was admitting that I gave it to her). After that, Maiko told me how she
elicited the English from Ana rather than provide her with an answer. In this interaction,
Maiko was assuming the role of the trainer and me the teacher. Van Manen (2008)
discusses pedagogy as the ability to distinguish what is appropriate and what is less
appropriate in one’s action with young people. Maiko was teaching me a lesson about
interacting with JHS students.
On the other hand, the students not helping each other in the writing revealed a
pedagogical puzzle Maiko was experiencing. Shirakawa’s school-wide curriculum
incorporated principles of cooperative learning which came from Manabu Sato’s (2016)
theory of school reform called School as Learning Community. Because of this,
cooperative learning was practiced across all subjects at Shirakawa JHS. Cooperative
learning seemed to be an issue for the writing class and in Extract 7.2.5, I asked Maiko
about this.
Extract 7.2.5 The challenge of cooperative learning and writing
J: In Sato Manabu's theory, like, the students are supposed to 1
help each other. So, for example, if this student is not 2
writing and this student is not writing and the other members 3
are supposed to help. 4
M: Yes 5
J: But it doesn't happen. 6
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M: Yes. Um, it's difficult. 7
J: Um. I was thinking the same thing. 8
M: So they definitely need, self-support. 9
J: Self-support? 10
M: Like I, usually all the friends that are trying to help them. 11
For example, Nakano kun, even if the friends help. He is not, 12
he is not interested in anything, like studying. So the 13
friends like kind of got tired of teaching to him 14
((Abbreviated))
J: So, I see, in theory they are supposed to help each other but 15
you know, sometimes, I guess that some students don't try or 16
I guess that they forget something. It's too much for - 17
M: - Umm, yeah. 18
J: OK 19
M: And these students can't write ((Pointing to students in the 20
class seating diagram)) But he ((referring to another student 21
in the diagram beside Nakano-kun)) wrote one sentence, I went 22
to my grandparents' house. 23
In Line 6, I bluntly said that Sato’s theory was not working in the writing class.
Maiko agreed and brought up the example of Nakano-kun: a boy who was well behaved
but did not try in class (Line 12). Maiko acknowledged that some students just could not
be helped by others. Even in a school like Shirakawa, which had a strong learning culture
among teachers, a gifted English teacher in Maiko, and diligent students, there were
groups of students who, no matter what, would not do the work. Extract 7.2.5 shows that
Maiko had realized students’ lack of effort in writing was an issue. Her talk about
Nakano-kun indicates that although she had reconciled herself to this fact, she also would
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try to encourage all students to give an effort. In lines 21 to 23, Maiko indicated her
satisfaction in getting one particular student to at least write one sentence.
7.3 Empathizing with Yuta
Yuta knew how to make and carry out a lesson, how to organize a blackboard, and
how to explain the day’s linguistic content well. Furthermore, his school had a school-
wide framework for teaching and a mentorship system for the first-year teachers. In
theory, he should have been in a situation in which he could thrive. In reality, Yuta
experienced anxiety issues concerning his workplace, student management, and self-
confidence. In CI 1R, I noticed that not all things were well and elicited from Yuta the
issues he was facing. In CI 2R, I witnessed and participated in the type of feedback that
was not helpful to Yuta. In CI 3R, I witnessed Yuta experience success. In CI 4R, I
participated in a writing class together with Yuta’s mentor, Fujita Sensei. While Fujita
Sensei and I were positive about the class, Yuta expressed his reservations, which
revealed the primary issues he could not resolve.
7.3.1 CI 1Y Puzzles and Practice: Disconnect with students (October 21, 2013)
By the time I observed Yuta’s class for the first time, on October, 21, 2013, I had
already observed Maiko’s and Risa’s classes. The class was Grade 2 Homeroom E. Later,
I would learn that this class in particular was difficult for Yuta to teach. On this day, I
could sense a disconnect between Yuta and the students which I had not seen with the
other teachers in this study.
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7.3.1.1 CI 1Y Event
At the beginning of the class, I was not the only guest; a school administrator21 and
a senior teacher were also present for the first 10 minutes. One of the primary differences
between Yuta’s circumstance and that of the other teachers was that often when I
observed his classes, a school administrator or senior teacher would appear for a few
minutes and then leave. In this lesson, I was surprised by the extent to which Yuta
followed the conventional procedures that a typical teacher is instructed to do. All the
components of the lesson were explicitly laid out as the English teacher education books
instructed (Yoneyama et al., 2013), and it felt like I was observing a student-teacher’s
class.
21 In the case of Yuta, I have intentionally made the job titles of those people who observed
his class ambiguous.
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Figure 7.3.1 shows how half the blackboard appeared at the ending of the class. First,
in the top left corner of the black board was the “All 5”, or o-ru go, consisting of five
basic rules which students at Aoki JHS were supposed to follow in each class. They were
1) Do a greeting (at the beginning and end of class); 2) Be seated at the bell; 3) No
forgetting (to bring necessary things to class); 4) No private talk; 5) Be positive. At the
end of the class, the teacher would write a circle next to each rule the class had
successfully followed. In the bottom-left corner was the day’s class plan. The day’s class
consisted of nine stages and Yuta would tick each one after finishing.
The goal of the day was to “learn expressions for giving people things,” which was
written at the top of the blackboard. The class itself was a mixture of the textbook and
Yuta’s supplementary activities within the lesson framework of his school. The activities
Figure 7.3.1. A picture of the blackboard in Yuta’s class
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seemed well thought-out, and Yuta’s explanations and blackboard writing, to me, were
easy to understand. However, during the communicative activity, number 7 on the class
menu, Yuta stayed at the front of the class while a group of students in the back were
seemingly in direct violation of the ‘No private talk’ rule.
In the last 10 minutes, Yuta gave a summary of the structure (shown in Figure 7.3.1)
with confidence. At the end of the class, students received a score of five for following
the All 5 rules but, to me, they did not deserve it. The fact that Yuta stayed in front of the
class and seemed to pretend not to notice the students talking indicated to me that
something was amiss.
7.3.1.2 CI 1Y Interpretation
In the subsequent interviews with Yuta, I elicited the following problems which
would remain throughout our six months together. They were youyu ga nai (lack of
sufficient time for planning and improving classes), choukin ga nai (no reserve of
activities or techniques he could use), the supervision he was experiencing, and student
management. All of these were intertwined. Yuta said as a teacher, “he was still not
developed” (mada kakuristu shiteinai) and he did not have the reserve of activities and
techniques that veteran teachers have (choukin ga nai). He talked about how in other
subjects such as math or social studies, teachers could do teacher-centered classes (issei
jugyou), but he was expected to do group work or pair work, which his students were not
used to. He had been having trouble managing the students and was relieved of his
homeroom duties. In addition, he was an advisor to two clubs, ouendan or cheerleading
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club, and the kendo club, which was very time-consuming. Finally, as mentioned earlier,
Yuta’s classes were being routinely observed, and he felt that he could not meet the
expectations placed on him.
In summary, Yuta was expected to teach students with whom he had a shaky
relationship using a teaching methodology they were not used to. He felt very busy and
did not have the time to develop his own practice as he wanted. Previously, Risa had
expressed similar anxieties to me about establishing herself as a teacher to the students
and being very busy. However, as CI 1R showed, she and the students seemed to enjoy
an amicable relationship. The problems Yuta was experiencing seemed to place a greater
mental burden on him than the other teachers felt.
7.3.2 CI 2Y TOT: Overwhelmed with advice (November 19, 2013)
This CI occurred in a post-class feedback conference between Yuta and six other
teachers. All attendees were aware that he was experiencing difficulties and attempted to
provide guidance.
7.3.2.1 CI 2Y Event
On November 19, 2013, Yuta held a lesson study (an open class observed by other
teachers) and a post-class meeting with officials from the BOE as well as administrators
and teachers from his school. Because of the sensitive nature of the meeting and the
participants involved, I am unable to provide details about what was said. In addition,
although Yuta and I talked after the meeting, I did not record the conversation so he could
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speak candidly if he wished. At the meeting everyone, including me, heaped advice on
him. Some of it could be thought of as constructive and some of it as critical.
7.3.2.2 CI 2Y Interpretation
After the meeting, based on our conversation, I could sense that this advice would
not be useful. A frequent pattern when Yuta received feedback was for him to
acknowledge that the point made was valid but then confide in me that it was not possible
for him to change. In CI 3R, I discussed my giving advice to Risa about something that
she did not believe was an issue. Yuta, on the other hand, was aware of the issues being
brought up, and usually expressed his agreement with them.
In my interviews with Yuta, he would often use the expression yoyuu ga nai (I have
no time) to say that he was aware of the expectations other teachers had for him but was
too overwhelmed to meet them. This failure also seemed to be damaging to his self-
confidence. In Extract 7.3.1, Yuta expressed this sentiment when, on October 29, 2013, I
brought up the idea of Yuta having students write a brief reflection at the end of each
class as a means to develop a closer relationship with individual students.
Extract 7.3.1 No time!
Y: Maybe we need reflection or self-evaluation. But, ummmmm. But 1
I'm not built my style just yet. I should not try to do too 2
many things like writing impressions or reflection. My own my 3
own style is not developed. It is important to do methods 4
continuously. [If I decide], “oh, this is a good way” and have 5
the students do a reflection they will probably be confused 6
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because they are not used to it. If I had them continuously do 7
reflection, or review, or self-evaluation at the ending of 8
each class from April then maybe it would be ok. But, I don’t 9
have my own style. When do we have to do reflection? There is 10
many kinds of lessons. Just grammar and reading text, power-up 11
speaking, power up listening, and my project. [My style] is 12
still not developed. 13
J: I see. 14
K: I live by the day, I live by the day. Maybe, maybe. Many of 15
the teachers have prepared for the class. Last day. Today 16
also, survive. Today also, survive. I don't have yoyuu 17
[=available time].18
In Lines 1 to 13, Yuta shows his reasoning for declining a suggestion, he cannot
simply change his class to accommodate the whims of other teachers because it will
confuse the students and he is still trying to develop his own style. However, the advice
from other teachers and me did not stop during the post-class meeting in CI 2Y; this was
likely distressing for him. Based on my fieldnotes from the post-class meeting and
interviews with Yuta, the other teachers seemed to be vexed that Yuta was not absorbing
their advice and changing his teaching. Yuta, on the other hand, seemed to be vexed that
he was not being given more space. From Lines 15 to 18, it can be gathered that Yuta’s
initial period of being a teacher, the so called “survival and discovery stage” (Farrell,
2008), was mainly survival rather than discovery. As discussed in Section 3.1, teachers’
self-efficacy (Mercer, 2016), or belief in their capacity to handle the duties of their job,
can help them overcome the initial growing pains experienced by first-year teachers. In
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Lines 15 to 16, Yuta says that the other teachers have prepared for class and intimates
that he cannot; he can only survive. It seemed that his self-efficacy was lacking.
7.3.3 CI 3Y Practice: A successful lesson (December 17, 2013)
CI 3Y was notable in that it was the first time I saw Yuta conduct a lesson looking
confident and holding the students’ attention. I would later learn why. The homeroom
was 2F, for which he was relieved of his duties as the head homeroom teacher. He was
still the assistant homeroom teacher, however, and had developed a good working
relationship with the replacement homeroom teacher, Tanaka Sensei.
7.3.3.1 CI 3Y Event
The goal of the lesson Yuta taught to 2F on December 17, 2013, was to “learn how
to solve the jitsuryoku test” or English achievement test. The Chinese characters used for
‘jitsu’ ‘ryoku’ are 実 力 and a direct translation would be ‘real power.’ The jitsuryoku
test is a standardized test that schools can use to see how their students compare with
others in the prefecture. Students can also use it to gauge how prepared they are for the
high-school entrance exam (all high schools in the prefecture used the same one). The
previous day, students had done the grammar section of a practice jitsuryoku test but had
performed so poorly that Yuta wanted them to try again. This time, he was armed with a
test-taking strategy handout provided by his mentor Fujita Sensei. In the first 10 minutes
of the class, Yuta had students do the grammar test again. When they finished, Yuta said
the following:
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Extract 7.3.2 Students reacting to Yuta’s introduction of the mock test
Y: Ittan tensuu wo tukete miyou to omoundesukedo, daitai sorega 1
jibun no jitsuryoku da to omotte kudasai.[= OK, we are going 2
to mark our tests. I want you to think of your score as being 3
about the same as your English ability.] 4
MS: Yabai zo:.[= This is bad!] 5
SS: /Yabai zo./ [= This is bad!]6
In Lines 1 to 4, Yuta told the students the importance of the achievement test by
telling them they should think of the score as being equivalent to their English ability.
From the cacophony of Yabai zo (This is bad.) said by the male students in Line 6, it
seemed that Yuta’s message had reached them. It should be noted that zo is a sentence
ending that adds force to a statement in Japanese. Students’ yabai-zo could be interpreted
as saying that what Yuta said is not good for them so they had better work hard or they
are in trouble. Students’ subsequent effort seemed to support this interpretation. When
Yuta began his lecture (shown in Extract 7.3.3), I was struck by his confidence as well as
the students’ concentration.
Extract 7.3.3 Yuta beginning his lecture on the achievement test
Y: The achievement test is designed like the high-school entrance 1
examination. If you study techniques for taking it, you will 2
definitely improve. Today, we are going to try, or do again, 3
the grammar, listening, and writing section. I am going to 4
teach you the strategies and you’ll be able to see how well 5
you can do it. OK, first is listening. It is worth 25 points. 6
((He asks the students to take notes and they start rummaging
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through their desks for them. Yuta begins to write the point
distribution for each section of the test on the board.))
Listening is 8 minutes. How many minutes are left on the test? 7
S: 42. 8
Y: How are you going to use these 42 minutes? These days, the 9
reading problems are getting longer. This is to reduce the 10
motivation of the test takers. I will teach you how to not 11
fall into this trap. If you spend 10 minutes on each reading 12
passage then that will give you 30 minutes. 13
Extract 7.3.3 shows Yuta’s lecture as well as a translated excerpt of the handout he
used. Yuta started by telling the students that they will improve their scores if they know
the techniques for taking the test and then said that he would teach these techniques. He
then articulated the challenge of the listening section before promising a way to meet it.
When he told students to take out their notebooks, they responded.
Much of what Yuta said was written in the students’ handout, which was authored
by Fujita Sensei. For example, Extract 7.3.3 shows that the information Yuta gave about
the reading section was taken from the handout (Lines 9 – 12). Yuta was basing his lecture
on this handout and was speaking with authority.
Translation on an excerpt of the achievement test handout used by Yuta
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7.3.3.2 CI 3Y Interpretation
In an interview conducted at a Starbucks the next week (December 26, 2013), Yuta
explained to me the relevance of the jitsuryoku test, the support he received from Tanaka
Sensei and Fujita Sensei, and his relationship with 2F, his former homeroom. These
factors together enabled Yuta to teach successfully. Yuta and I went on to discuss what
the jitsuryoku test meant to him.
Extract 7.3.4 The meaning of jitsuryoku
J: What is interesting to me is that it is called jitsuryoku, 1
what does jitsuryoku mean to you? 2
Y: Proficiency test. 3
J: What does proficiency mean to you? 4
Y: Proficiency FOR entrance exam. 5
J: OK, what is proficiency for entrance exam. What kind of 6
proficiency do you need? 7
Y: English proficiency. I think they measure English proficiency. 8
((Abbreviated))
J: What are students' attitudes towards the test. Are they 9
interested in it? I mean. Do they concentrate hard? 10
Y: Un, un, un, un 11
J: Yeah? Are there any differences in students' concentration 12
when you do a proficiency test review class and when you do a 13
normal class? 14
Y: What do you mean? 15
J: So is there any difference in students' attitudes? 16
Y: Students in 2F are interested in their hyouka or evaluation. 17
Totemo ki ni suru [=They are very interested.] They tend to ki 18
ni suru [=be interested in] their evaluation or their 19
jitsuryoku [=real ability]. Maybe they are interested in the 20
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examination. They want to enter high school. 21
In Lines 1 to 8, Yuta reveals that, in his opinion, the jitsuryoku test does indeed
measure English proficiency. Therefore, when he told students that their test scores
matched their English proficiency, he was perhaps saying something that he believed had
some truth. Aoki JHS students took the test mainly to prepare for the HS entrance exam,
and second-year students, or the students Yuta was teaching, would take it twice that year.
In Lines 9 to 10, when I ask Yuta if they tended to concentrate hard on the test, Yuta gave
the acknowledgement tokens in a loud and fast manner. Students were interested in their
evaluation and the proficiency test was similar to the Oyama Prefecture HS entrance
examination (all public high schools in Oyama use the same exam). Therefore, the
jitsuryoku test not only measured students’ true ability but also served as practice for the
high-school examination, which, as mentioned in Section 3.2.2, can determine students’
life trajectories. After confirming the significance of the jitsuryoku test, Yuta and I
discussed Homeroom 2F in Extract 7.3.5
Extract 7.3.5 Class 2F
Y: 2F is the best class of the three I think, but nOW. The first 1
and second semester the situation was different. The HRT, Ms. 2
Tanaka has strong shidouryoku [=ability for instruction]. And 3
usually the HRT Ms. Tanaka says many times about juken [=taking 4
tests], the entrance examination and they got motivated. So, 5
they became like a very concentrated in the class. 6
J: How does that compare to 2E and 2D. 7
Y: 2D is too quiet and they have no response to the teacher. 2E 8
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they have a little concentration. 9
J: What is the difference? What do you think the reason might be? 10
Is it the homeroom teacher or. 11
Y: The members of the class, or the teacher, or the atmosphere 12
created in since now. Desu ne [=you know] 13
To me, it was interesting that Yuta called 2F the best class of the three that he taught
since he had been relieved of his homeroom teacher duties. He complimented the strong
shidouryoku (guidance abilities) of the current homeroom teacher (Line 3) and suggested
that was the reason. He also revealed that Ms. Tanaka uses the entrance examination
(Lines 4 and 5) as a motivational tool. It was apparent that Yuta had a strong connection
with the class as well as a good mentor in Tanaka Sensei.
We discussed the worksheet made by Fujita Sensei in Extract 7.3.6.
Extract 7.3.6 Discussing Fujita Sensei’s handout
J: Reading this ((Showing the handout Yuta used on December 17.)) 1
Watashi mo benkyou ni narimasita [= I learned a lot from it 2
too!]. These are your ideas? 3
Y: No, this is made by Ms. Fujita. Ms. Fujita use this. I was 4
planning to use the jitsuryoku test. I made another, similar 5
materials but this one has advice, explanation on the sheet. 6
Risa Sensei uses this worksheet also. I think this is better 7
with the students with low motivation. I don't have anything on 8
the worksheet with advice and shoukei. How do you say shoukei? 9
J: Score? ((The meaning is subtotal, not score.)) 10
Y: And I was planning to have a test for 50 minutes. So the student 11
had to take a test in 50 minutes but this in this way, so... 12
Like, uh, part by part, I think it's better. 13
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J: Why? 14
Y: It is easy to take for the students with low proficiency or low 15
motivation. I think it is easier to take. 16
In the extract, Yuta articulated why Fujita Sensei’s handout was better than what he
had planned: it explained each part of the test concretely and would be better for students
with low motivation (Lines 7 - 8) or low proficiency (Line 15). Furthermore, Risa was
using the same worksheet.
The jitsuryoku test was meaningful to both students and teachers. It seemed that the
test not only showed students’ real ability in English but also their potential to do well on
the high school test. In fact, with Risa and Yuta (I did not have a chance to see Maiko
teach for a test), I did not observe any other activity that students took as seriously as test
preparation. The power of the jitsuryoku test together with the great tool supplied by
Fujita Sensei, Yuta’s own expertise, and the classroom atmosphere constructed by Tanaka
Sensei facilitated his success.
Entrance examinations in Japan are often criticized for preventing English from
becoming more communicative (Butler, 2011; Sakui, 2004). However, CI 3Y shows that
it could be used as a tool for increasing student motivation to study English as well as a
means to improve a homeroom environment. Furthermore, the mentor teacher, Fujita
Sensei, had expertise in preparing students for the entrance exam which she could pass
down to Yuta and Risa. To me, this experience showed the positive aspects of entrance
exams.
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7.3.4 CI 4Y TOT: A bad class for Yuta (January 29, 2014)
On January 29, I spent an enjoyable two periods helping Yuta conduct writing
classes for homerooms 2E and 2D together with Fujita Sensei. The textbook page was the
same as that covered by Risa in CI 5R. The CI occurred after the class in my discussion
with Yuta and Fujita Sensei. This discussion showed the type of mentorship Yuta might
be most receptive to and, on the contrary, what vexed him.
7.3.4.1 CI 4Y Event
At the beginning of the interview, I was surprised to learn that Yuta was not satisfied
with the day’s classes. That morning, the homeroom teacher of 2E, the first class which
he had taught, and Yuta had reprimanded some of its members for “not concentrating in
class.” He said that 2E generally could not “calm down,” and it was “partly because of
my bad lesson, but they do not concentrate on the class.” I responded by attempting to
express empathy, describing my struggles managing JHS students when I was an ALT. I
then asked Fujita Sensei what she would do in such a situation and she responded as
below.
Extract 7.3.7 Fujita Sensei’s take on 2E
F: Yuta, I know that you are having troubles with 2E, but 1
((directed to James)) they’re not bad kids. 2
Y: They’re not bad kids ↓. 3
F: But, they aren’t interested in English. Or English class is 4
taxing, something unpleasant. If possible, they are the type of 5
kids who don’t want to make the effort. But, when I was 6
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teaching, there were students who could not sit, could not 7
listen to others, who would leave the class as they please. 8
[2E] is definitely different. It depends on how you teach with 9
this class. These children, actually want the teachers’ 10
attention, they want the teacher to teach them. They want to 11
understand English. So, they know they have to study English. 12
So, if we could skillfully control these, these 30 students, it 13
would be good.14
In Lines 1 - 2, Fujita Sensei’s remark to me was perhaps a respectful rebuke for my
insinuating that 2E was difficult to manage when asking her what she would do in such a
situation. Yuta seconded her statement that 2E was not bad. Fujita Sensei’s appraisal of
2E was positive (Lines 10 – 12), and she told Yuta that if he learned to control them, class
would be good (Lines 13-14). In Extract 7.3.8, she shared her strategy for engaging the
students.
Extract 7.3.8 Fujita Sensei and Yuta’s discussion
F: And, you know, when I was teaching an unruly, bad class before, 1
above all writing, above all, they liked writing. With these 2
children, I would not speak too much and just tell them “let’s 3
try!” and, above all, these wild children liked to write. And, 4
as their notebooks became fuller and fuller, I’m not sure but 5
it seemed like they felt a sense of accomplishment, looking at 6
[their notebooks] they thought, “Wow, I did this!” Now, 7
however, these students in classes 2D, 2E, and 2F are 8
completely different. Yuta, if you can draw out of them a 9
little desire to study, you will find success. And, you know, 10
your lesson plans, like today with 2D are really well composed. 11
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J: Un, un, un. 12
F: You are trying hard. Today, I checked all of 2D [students] and 13
they all prepared pictures. That was fantastic. Students 14
usually might not prepare pictures, so your class flowed very 15
well.16
There were two notable things from this extract. First, Fujita Sensei discussed how
she used writing to try to manage difficult classes. Both Risa and Yuta were doing a lot
of writing in their classes, and I realized that this was perhaps the influence of Fujita
Sensei. Second her assessment of Yuta’s situation was encouraging. In Lines 7 to 9, by
“completely different,” Fujita Sensei was stating that the students Yuta taught were not
as difficult to manage as the students she taught in the past. In Lines 9 to 16, Fujita Sensei
discussed the potential of the students and Yuta himself. In Line 12, with my
acknowledgement tokens, I was seconding what Fujita Sensei had said and listening to
her put Yuta’s situation in a much more positive light than I had been able to.
However, Yuta was not receptive to Fujita Sensei’s encouragement and in Extract
7.3.9, she was able to elicit from him the reason.
Extract 7.3.9 Yuta’s disappointment
Y: ((sighs)) 1
F: Nande? Sonna jishin (ga nai?) [=Why don’t you have more 2
confidence?] 3
Y: Yappa ((groaning)) Kuyashii desune. Hontou ni. [=Actually. I am 4
disappointed. Really↓] 5
J: /Nani ga kuyashii/ [=What are you disappointed about?] 6
F: /Nani? Nani?/ [What? What?] 7
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Y: I know, I know they are good students. And they want to, So 8
they want to... Hmmmm. They want to be proficient in English 9
and they want to know the knowledge. I knOw that. So, because, 10
they are asking help. Sensei, sensei! [=Teacher! Teacher!] But 11
today so, te ga mawaranakatta [= I couldn’t help all of them.]12
Yuta sighed after Fujita Sensei’s pep talk, and she asked incredulously why he
lacked so much confidence (Line 2). He said that he was disappointed, and both Fujita
Sensei and I were quick to ask him why (Lines 6 and 7). Fujita Sensei and I were both
counseling Yuta at the same time, trying to play the role of the supportive mentor. From
Line 8, Yuta began to speak in English, perhaps trying to emphasize his point to me that
he was disappointed that he could not assist all the students who needed help.
After this, Fujita Sensei delved deeper into this issue, eliciting from Yuta which
students in particular he struggled to help and his feelings about it, putting a positive
perspective on it when possible by saying things like, “well at least he handed in
something.”
Yuta felt comfortable talking to Fujita Sensei about what was bothering him. This
was evident when, after Fujita Sensei put a positive spin on not being able to help all the
students, Yuta brought up the fact that two school administrators who routinely observed
his class had dropped in unexpectedly on Homeroom 2E (Extract 7.3.10), the one class
he felt most insecure about teaching. This appeared to be the root of Yuta’s angst.
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Extract 7.3.10 An unexpected visit from two administrators
Y: And today, [two school administrators] came. 1
F： But, Yuta, it seems that you are really worried when the 2
administrators or Hall Sensei come to see your class. You know, 3
I think you should just show them your normal class. Especially 4
with Hall Sensei, he’ll help you out, so just show your normal 5
class. Actually, Yuta, you think that you need to show [one 6
particular administrator] a good class, don’t you? 7
Y: Always. 8
F: You don’t have to worry so much. 9
Y: ((Sighs)) 10
F: The usual, the usual class. 11
Y: Maybe, [one certain administrator] will get angry at me. 12
F: Maybe, it bothers you so much when [the certain administrator] 13
gets angry at you? 14
((Abbreviated))
Y: Because [the two administrators] always get angry at me, it 15
would be much better if they came to either 2D or 2F. I was so 16
surprised they came to 2E this time. Last week I had a lesson 17
study. The teacher’s advisor [gave] me some advice and [you] 18
are no improvement. I was scolded and I’ll be, I think I will 19
be said, like a, you have a NO improvement. No, zero 20
improvement. “What’s are you doing?” It’s ok to just point out 21
the bad parts but chotto iya da, iya da. Iya na no de: [=I 22
don’t like it, I don’t like it, so I don’t like it]. 23
To my surprise, Fujita Sensei associated me with two school administrators who
would routinely observe his classes. While their purpose for observation was to evaluate
his teaching, that was not what I considered to be my purpose. However, her primary
message in Lines 3 to 6 was that Yuta should teach his normal class for whoever was
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watching and not be afraid to ask for help. In Lines 6 and 7, very sensitive information
was revealed: Yuta felt obligated to show one school administrator in particular a good
class. In Line 12, he revealed to Fujita Sensei and me why he could not show them a
normal class (because they would get angry with him). In Lines 13 and 14, Fujita’s gentle
confirmation that Yuta was bothered when the administrators told him that his classes
were ineffective mirrored counsellor talk. From Line 15 to 23, Yuta completely opened
up, divulging an experience the previous week in which he was reprimanded by a
teacher’s advisor from the BOE. The fact he said this in English probably meant the
message was aimed particularly at me.
This extract shows that Fujita Sensei was able to elicit from Yuta what was really
worrying him. In expressing his problems in English, Yuta signaled that he trusted me
and felt supported.
Finally, in Extract 7.3.11, Yuta explained to me and Fujita Sensei what he felt would
happen after we left.
Extract 7.3.11 The predicted aftermath of Yuta’s class
Y: The problem is that after [class] is finished, [I will be 1
told,] “you were not able to do it, even though some children 2
weren’t working. ((Imitating the feedback he gets)) You didn't 3
SEE the students. You have NO improvement.” 4
In this extract, Yuta was continuing to lament that he could not provide sufficient
assistance to all the students. Because of this, he thought he would be reprimanded later
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by the school administrators. As Fujita Sensei had said, the class was well thought-out
and the procedure was clear. For example, Yuta had made a handout that showed the
outline of what students should write, and in the class I encouraged students to refer to it,
which helped them complete the task. In Extract 7.3.12, I attempted to point this out after
Fujita Sensei had counseled Yuta.
Extract 7.3.12 Discussing Yuta’s handout
J: ((Abbreviated)) Yuta, I think you made a very easy-to-1
understand handout. 2
Y: It’s a model. 3
J: Yeah, model ((Speaking incoherently in Japanese)). However, 4
there were some students who did not seem to understand the 5
concept of using the outline in the print to do the writing. 6
That was one problem. But, at the beginning of the class, if 7
you say, “You know, please take a look at this print. You know, 8
this print will help you.” So, but what I liked about the print 9
is that I know that Yuta made the print to help the students. 10
That was very good, right. Um, and some of the students, you 11
know, right. When I show the print to Shota, Rika, and Kiho 12
they could use it. With Shota, I worked together with him on 13
the first-half of the writing but he did the second half by 14
himself. With Rika, though, it couldn’t be helped, I had to 15
work with her on the whole writing. 16
((Abbreviated))
J: But, you know, maybe at the beginning of the class you're 17
saying here remember this print everybody? Like, take out this 18
print. Just to remind them. If you don't know how to write use 19
the print. The print will help you. Because, you, I know you 20
make a lot of effort in making your handouts. I know that that 21
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is one of the tokuchou [=characteristics] of your classes. 22
Right, I know you have good knowledge of how to make a class. 23
And as [Fujita Sensei] said, the structure of your class is 24
very good. And you make, you can make good handouts too. right, 25
I think, nanika [= like], you have some tools that you can use. 26
hmmm. 27
I initially praised Yuta for his handout and told him how one student I helped, Shota,
was able to use the instructional print to complete the exercise (Lines 12- 13). I then
emphasized that he should draw students’ attention to the print. My rationale for this
suggestion was that students would need to learn how to do tasks by themselves or help
each other to lessen the teacher’s load and make the writing classes truly successful.
However, I did not say this to Yuta.
After this, I attempted to elicit strategies from Yuta about what to do with students
who finished early. Yuta said that, with 2F, he was able to get some students to be
teaching assistants. This could be done with 2F but not 2E because “the situation is better.”
Although being teaching assistants would not work for 2E, he could give students who
finished extra handouts or extra tasks in the workbook or ask them to write more
information. However, “teaching assistant was too difficult for them.”
7.3.4.2 CI 4Y Interpretation
There are two factors revealed in this CI which, I believe, contributed to Yuta
struggling in his first year. The first was his damaged relationship with 2E, the school
191
administrators, and BOE officials. The second was that he was likely receiving the wrong
kind of feedback.
Regarding the first factor, Yuta had good teaching skills, but he had a tense
relationship with Homeroom 2E and his superiors. For example, CI 1Y showed a
disconnect between Yuta and students in 2E. In CI 4Y, Yuta became so tense about the
administrators coming to watch his class that he could not take solace in the fact that the
students of 2E were actually making an effort in his class. By contrast, CI 3M showed
that Maiko would feel satisfaction if an unmotivated student would at least write one
sentence in a writing class.
Yuta had given up on being able to repair his relationship with 2E. On February 21,
2014, when I asked Yuta which grade he wanted to teach the next year, he said the
following:
Extract 7.3.13 The students Yuta wants to teach next year.
K: If I teach the second grade, I would make use of the lessons 1
learned this year and redo everything. With first grade too, I 2
would make use of the lessons learned this year, and tell them 3
that “to be able to do this by second year, you have to be able 4
to do that.” 5
The original Japanese for “Make use of the lessons learned this year” in Lines 1 to
2 was kotoshi no hansei wo ikashite. Hansei can also mean “regret,” Yuta likely meant
a “mistake.” Yuta seemed to think of his first year as a failure and wanted a fresh start.
In Period 2 of this study, Risa would struggle with class management issues, but she
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still wanted to teach the same students next year. In other words, Risa could find positive
aspects in her relationship with the students which made her want to continue. Yuta, on
the other hand, wanted to teach different students and make use of the wisdom gained
from his mistakes. According to Mercer (2016), in the field of positive psychology,
having positive relationships with others is necessary for one’s well-being, while
Priestly et al. (2015) call relationships a necessary condition for teachers to exercise
their agency. With Homeroom 2E and some of the school administrators, it seemed that
Yuta lacked positive relationships.
Regarding the second factor, appropriate feedback, CI 4Y showed Fujita Sensei
skillfully getting to the root of Yuta’s problems: his inability to connect with the students
and his anxiety about other people coming to watch his class. This CI afforded Yuta the
opportunity to reveal his true feelings. However, in Extract 7.3.12, I proceeded to give
Yuta advice about how to do his writing class. For Yuta, the advice did not matter
because he was so vexed about his relationship issues. As a TOT, I should have picked
up on this, as Fujita Sensei did, but I could not deviate from my preconceived notion
that I had to give Yuta advice. In CI 2Y, I attempted to show how Yuta’s colleagues and
superiors at school did the same: heap advice on a struggling Yuta in order to help him
improve.
After reviewing the data of my six months working with Yuta, I can conclude with
reasonable certainty that advice was one thing that he did not need. Rather, he needed
the type of support and mentorship provided by Tanaka Sensei and Fujita Sensei.
Through working under Tanaka Sensei, Yuta could experience making 2F into a
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cohesive homeroom. Fujita Sensei offered Yuta some practical ideas, listened to his
concerns, put things in a positive light, and encouraged him. Yuta informed me in March,
2014 that he was leaving this study. Unfortunately, I was never able to see how he grew
as a teacher or to develop into a TOT who could better support him.
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8. Period 2: A Fresh Start with Risa and Maiko (April to August, 2014)
April marked the beginning of the academic year and a change in the way I observed
classes and conducted interviews. Catching up on transcribing the interviews during the
spring vacation enabled me to see that I was unintentionally either denying the teachers
opportunities to talk or providing unsolicited advice. Therefore, I changed the interview
strategy and instead elicited from Risa and Maiko the issues in teaching they were
confronting and their attempts to resolve them.
Both Risa and Maiko taught English to first-year students and both were homeroom
teachers for that grade. First grade at their respective schools had four homerooms and
both teachers taught English to each homeroom four times a week. I primarily watched
both teachers teach their own homerooms, and I therefore got to know the students better
than I had in Period 1.
8.1 Risa becomes a novice teacher again
Teaching Grade 1 for the first time meant that Risa would also be encountering a
new set of challenges. As a homeroom teacher, it was Risa’s duty to get the students
acclimated to JHS and, as an English teacher, to help students build a foundation of
skills in English for their secondary school careers. The prior year’s on-site supervisor,
Fujita Sensei, was no longer at school to provide Risa with guidance. Furthermore, Risa
was teaching different material to students with different needs. Arguably, she was a
novice all over again but with less support than the previous year.
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In the second and third periods, the majority of lessons I observed Risa teach were
based on textbook pages with a sequence of activities similar to a Presentation, Practice,
and Production (PPP) format. Because so many lessons revolved around this particular
kind of textbook page, an overview of the PPP format is necessary before a description
of the lessons. Figure 8.1.1 shows a typical PPP lesson in the Sunshine first grade
textbook.
Figure 8.1.1 A typical lesson in Sunshine English Course 1 (Kairyudo 2011a)
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A typical PPP lesson in Sunshine 1 consisted of five parts: 1. Goal, oboeyou (2.
basic dialogue), kite miyou (3. listening), itte miyou (4. speaking), and tukatte miyou (5.
let’s try). Each part is explained in the Sunshine guidebook as follows (Kairyudo, 2012).
The goal is what the students should be able to do by the end of the lesson. In Figure
8.1.1, it is to be able to answer, “Yes I am/ No, I’m not” when asked a question about
what kind of person you are. In the basic dialogue, students are exposed to the target
language (usually a structure) in an “easy-to-understand situation” (Kairyudo, 2012, p.
4). The structure is also explained in Japanese. In listening, students listen to dialogues,
answer questions, and (aurally) “understand the new language” (Kairyudo, 2012, p. 4).
In speaking, students “orally practice the new language” (Kairyudo, 2012, p. 4).
Finally, in let’s try students use the new language “for self-expression in interaction”
(Kairyudo, 2012, p. 4). The lesson goal and directions for each activity are written in
Japanese. Therefore, in theory, students should be able to figure out how to do each
activity and understand the overall rationale of the lesson with little guidance from the
teacher.
For Risa, learning to conduct this type of lesson in an engaging manner as well as
managing the disruptive behavior of the first-grade boys was a formidable challenge. I
describe two CIs in Period 2 which encapsulate this particular puzzle: how to teach a
PPP-style lesson. In both CIs, I witnessed slow-moving PPP-style lessons, and each
revealed different reasons for the deliberate pace.
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8.1.1 CI 6R Puzzles and Practice: Slow teaching of grammar (May 9, 2014)
On this day, I was observing 1C, Risa’s homeroom, for the first time. There were
33 students there on that day and Charles, her ALT, was assisting. The lesson covered
the textbook page shown in Figure 8.1.1. Risa wrote the objective on the blackboard and
in the day’s worksheet as “learn how to say ‘Are you ~?’ and ‘I am not.’ Although the
textbook taught both the affirmative and negative responses, Risa had only the negative
one in her goal. In this lesson, Risa planned to teach the new vocabulary, introduce the
basic dialogue by explaining the structure and doing a writing exercise, and then do the
listening, speaking, and let’s try sections of the textbook.
8.1.1.1 CI 6R Event
Risa began the lesson by asking students about the weather, introducing me for the
first time, learning the new words for the lesson, checking students’ notebooks,
returning homework, and passing out the day’s worksheet with Charles, the ALT,
assisting her. Learning the new words - fan, yes, no, not, baseball, basketball - took the
most time. Because the students had taken English in elementary school, they had likely
been exposed to all the words except, perhaps, fan.
Risa first had the students listen to Charles say the words and then she said the
Japanese.
Extract 8.1.1 Introducing a word
Charles: Number 17, Yes, yes 1
R: Hai [=Yes]2
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It is important to note the students had a vocabulary list provided by the teacher with
all the words and their Japanese translations from the textbook unit. After they had
listened to the words and Risa had provided the translation, Risa and Charles practiced
the new words like this:
Extract 8.1.2 Practicing words
Charles: Yes. 1
Ss and R: Yes, yes. 2
Risa and Charles did not start the main activity until 18 minutes had passed. They
introduced two variations of the basic dialogue. The extract below shows this.
Extract 8.1.3 Doing the Basic Dialogue
C: Are you a Giants fan? 1
R: Yes I am. 2
((Abbreviated))
C: Are you a Giants fan? 3
R: No I’m not. I’m not a baseball fan.4
Risa asked students what the dialogue meant, even though the translation was in the
worksheet shown in Figure 8.1.2 below. Altogether, the demonstration and confirmation
of the meaning took four minutes. Interestingly, when Risa said that she was not a
baseball fan, one boy gave a sigh as if he could not believe that she did not like baseball.
Risa then explained the grammar point for approximately eleven minutes, highlighting
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how to make the interrogative sentence and how to respond to it. This surprised me
because it seemed that many of the students understood the construction from the
beginning. Also, it was explained clearly in the worksheet that she had given to the
students (Figure 8.1.2). When the explanation was finished, Risa had the students fill in
the blanks in the worksheet where they were supposed to practice writing the structure.
There were approximately three or four students who did not do this. This lasted about
two minutes.
The students then spent two minutes reading the basic dialogue individually and
then another two minutes reading the basic dialogue in pairs. When this was over, Risa
called on two students to give a demonstration, which took two minutes. Altogether, Risa
spent about 23 minutes teaching and practicing the basic dialogue, which most of the
students already seemed to know. By the time she had finished introducing and explaining
the basic dialogue, there were only nine minutes remaining in the class. She ended the
lesson after doing listening.
Figure 8.1.2 A selection of Risa’s worksheet with the grammar point written across the top.
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Observing the students, I had noticed that some seemed to be excited to speak English
throughout the class as they repeatedly shouted out answers. I was anticipating that Risa
would give these students a chance to communicate in English but it did not happen.
8.1.1.2 CI 6R Interpretation
From Period 1, I understood that Risa’s style was to be thorough in her explanations,
but in our discussion following CI 6R, I wanted to know why she felt it necessary on this
day in particular to move at such a deliberate pace. At the beginning of the interview, I
gave Risa an overview of the activities, emphasizing their time allotment. Extract 8.1.4
shows our discussion after this.
Extract 8.1.4 Reflecting on the Class
J: So, yeah, talk to me about today's class. What happened? 1
R: What happened 2
J: Yeah.↓ 3
R: And what not happened.(laugh) 4
J: Uh hm. 5
R: I was planned 6
J: Uh hm. 7
R: to do by here. ↑ 8
J: Uh huh. 9
R: But I couldn't maybe I talked too much or (laugh) 10
J: Ah huh↑ 11
R: taked too much time to returning, return the = 12
J: =Uh hm= 13
R: =return the worksheet. And checking the notes. (laugh) 14
J: Uh hm. 15
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R: So, hmmm, 16
J: Well, sorry, I might have, you lost about two minutes from me 17
too so 18
R: Ah no↑ It's not, it's not the problem.↓ 19
J: Um. 20
R: So° 21
J: Where do you think you might have, if you talked too much, 22
where did you talk too much? = 23
R: = Ah, to, to, ahh, lecture↑ the new grammar↑= 24
J: =Ah huh, /okay/↓. 25
R: /uh/°It's too much explanation. (laugh) 26
J: Uh huh. = 27
R: = Cause I think almost, um, so many students already know 28
J: Uh hm. 29
R: The grammar↑ 30
J: Uh hm. 31
R: So, the expression, so I didn't have to 32
J: Uh hm. 33
R: talk so much. 34
J: Okay.↑ 35
R: But, a few people, a few boys 36
J: Uh hm. 37
R: are not good at, good at, or (laugh) 38
J: Uh hm. 39
R: English↑ 40
J: Uh hm. 41
R: Some boy, even can't read the words, easy words. 42
J: Oh reAlly↓ 43
R: Yeah. 44
J: Aaahh. ((writing notes)) I see. 45
R: So, I, I took too much time. 46
J: So, are you saying that a reason why you take so much time, or 47
the /reason/ 48
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R: /yeah, yeah, yeah/ 49
J: why you think you take a lot of time 50
R: um. 51
J: is because you're thinking about the two students who don't 52
understand? 53
R: Yeah. un° 54
J: Yes?= 55
R: =Yes. 56
J: I see° 57
According to Edge’s (2011) framework in Section 4.3.3, in this extract I was
‘framing the experience’ (by asking her to explain what happened) but attempting to have
Risa ‘interpret the picture.’ I had coded the interview talk before this extract as “indirect
support” in that I was summarizing what I observed with the intention of having Risa
realize the time distribution. When I asked Risa, “What happened?” she likely had no
other alternative than to conclude that she did not make as much progress as she should
have. This was indicated by her response, “What not happened,” followed by her laugh
in Line 4.
In Lines 5 to 9, my acknowledgement tokens show that I was waiting for Risa to say
what she did in Line 10: she talked too much. After that, Risa discussed other activities
that took too much time (Lines 12 and 14), and, in Line 17, I took some blame for the
slow pace too. After Risa attempted to assure me that my self-introduction was not a
problem (but it was), I asked her where she might have spoken too much in Lines 22 and
23, to which Risa gives a very quick answer. In Line 25, my immediate acknowledgement
token signaled that her point was exactly what I was thinking and what I wanted her to
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say. The lowering intonation of the ensuing “okay” was my trying to contain my
excitement. In Lines 26 to 35, Risa said exactly what I wanted to hear and my
acknowledgement token with rising intonation in Line 35 indicates my satisfaction. From
Line 36, Risa told me the reason why she overexplained. In Line 45, I expressed my
excitement, because I thought that I had successfully elicited the root of the problem for
Risa.
Later, we talked about two boys in particular, Isamu and Wataru, who sat together.
Wataru had special needs but was not being given much assistance at school. Isamu, on
the other hand, seemed uninterested in studying. As part of katei houmon (a homeroom
teacher’s biannual visit to the houses of the parents), Risa had talked with Isamu’s mother,
who was cooperative and was making an effort to compel Isamu to do his homework. So
far they had not been successful. Risa told me that it was a mistake to put Isamu and
Wataru together, and she would separate them in the next seating assignment. Risa and I
were partially able to summarize the nature of her puzzle as follows.
Extract 8.1.5 Risa and James summarize the puzzle
R: Uh, this section is so easy. Maybe they already know and they 1
are bored. Some boys or girls. So, I have problem about this. 2
What should I do? I always think but. Umm. But there are some, 3
some, boys, that don't know anything. So, I want to, um, good 4
at English people. I want them to do more. Nobashitai [=I want 5
to stretch their abilities]. 6
J: Ahhh. 7
R: For now, but maybe after that it is different, a little 8
different. But... 9
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J: Right... So you want to challenge the good English students. 10
R: Unnn. 11
J: You want the good English students to - 12
R: -Yeah, I think I need to - 13
J: - And you want to increase their abilities 14
R: Yeah 15
These data suggest that a big issue for Risa was how to conduct a mixed-level class.
In Lines 1 to 6, Risa admitted that the good students were bored and that she wanted to
challenge them more. Unfortunately, Risa was trying to expand on this from Line 9, but
in my attempt to summarize her thoughts, I was impeding her from finishing. Later in the
interview, Risa and I spoke in detail about the students who could not follow the class
and possible ways to support them.
Overall, I was happy with this interview because we were able to ascertain that
teaching mixed levels was a puzzle for her. Through a participatory framework of my
framing the experience and Risa interpreting, we were able to engage in descriptive
reflection (Farrell, 2015): describing what the teacher is doing, what the learners are doing,
and the result. After the interview, I thought that since Risa had recognized the issue and
proposed solutions, she was on her way to learning to teach mixed levels. The CI shows
that there were students in 1C who seemed genuinely interested but the class was made
uninteresting by Risa’s attempt to teach to the struggling students. The issue of class
management during the PPP lesson with 1C would remain a puzzle throughout the second
year of the study.
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8.1.2 CI 7R Puzzles: No progress on class management (June 18, 2016)
After Risa and I had discussed the challenge of teaching students of mixed levels the
previous month, I was looking forward to seeing what kind of changes I would see in her
instruction. On June 18, I observed Risa teach 1C again and witnessed the male students
hindering the class. Here, I realized that Risa’s puzzle for giving an engaging PPP-style
lesson to 1C went beyond their mixed levels.
On this day, Risa had planned to teach the first lesson in ‘Program 4’ of the textbook
(Kairyudo, 2011a). A ‘Program’ is equivalent to a textbook unit or chapter, and contained
about five lessons.
8.1.2.1 CI 7R Event
Risa began the lesson with 1C introducing all 43 words for ‘Program 4,’ rather than
only the words for the day’s lesson, at the same kind of deliberate pace witnessed in CI
6R. When Risa was introducing the words, I noticed that the male students were having
fun at the expense of the class. Extract 8.1.6 shows a part of the word list, Risa introducing
the word ‘many,’ and the male students’ ensuing disruptive behavior.
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Extract 8.1.6 Risa introduces the word ‘many’
R: Next, 32. ((To a MS who is talking)) Kyou no mokuhyou wo 1
omoidashite kudasai [=Remember today’s goal.] 2
MSs: //MANY, MANY// 3
R: 32, many. 4
MS: Many 5
R: Many 6
MSs: /Many, Many/ 7
MS1: Mini, many. 8
MS2: Camera! 9
R: ((MSs are repeating many.))Gakyuu shikou bu no futari, kyou no 10
mokuhyou wo omoidashite kudasai [=To the two of you on the 11
class management committee, don’t forget today’s goal.] 12
The extract starts with Risa reminding a student about a goal they had made as a
homeroom to concentrate more in class. Many of the male students were either talking to
one another or participating in the word practice in what seemed to be a sarcastic and
intentionally disruptive manner. In Line 3, all that could be heard was the male students’
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voices. When they were repeating the words, they seemed to be competing with each other
as to who could say the word loudest rather than practicing in earnest. They also continually
asked the teacher to say the word slowly so they could write the furigana (pronunciation
of the word in Japanese script). Because Risa introduced 43 words, the result was that, as
in the previous month, Risa did not start the basic dialogue until 19 minutes had elapsed.
8.1.2.2 CI 7R Interpretation
This year, it typically took Risa two classes to finish one textbook page whereas the
previous year it took only one class. CI 7R shows that one reason for the slow pace of the
class was lesson planning; it was not necessary to introduce and practice 43 new words in
a class where only a fraction of those words would be used. Another reason was the
constant disruptions by the boys. Risa revealed in an interview on June 30, 2014 that the
reason for the slower pace this year was that the students had yet to learn the common
classroom routines such as doing pair work, using notebooks, etc, and she had to “speak
same thing many times.” Another reason, she said in the same interview, was that when
the male students spoke, she had to speak more because they were so loud that other
students could not hear. The more disruptions she experienced, the more she felt she had
to speak for the sake of those students who did not understand.
Risa and I could identify problems with the lesson execution and how to improve it
(i.e. she took too much time with a specific activity), but her major puzzle was how to
handle the male students who were dominating classroom discussion to the extent that they
controlled the pace of the class. Rampton (2006) has found that in some UK schools the
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traditional classroom discursive structure in which the teacher determines who talks, in
what order, and about what was no longer the norm. On some days with 1C, it would seem
this way, but on other days, Risa would be the center of class. In this interview, we were
understanding the nature of the issue. Like CI 6R, I was hopeful that by understanding the
puzzle on a deeper level, Risa would be able to make appropriate changes. Overall, Period
2 had revealed that Risa’s greatest puzzle was management of 1C.
8.2 Maiko in control
For the new academic year, Maiko was teaching the first-year students again. This
time, she was a homeroom teacher, which meant she would have many more
responsibilities. However, Maiko continued to be in control of her situation. In this second
period there were two CIs involving Maiko. The first concerned her practice: I saw Maiko
teach the same page of the textbook which Risa had taught and was surprised by the
difference. The second CI involved a puzzle: how to follow national curricular guidelines
when they might not be appropriate.
8.2.1 CI 4M Practice: Successful grammar instruction (May 30, 2014)
After watching Risa struggle with the PPP-style textbook pages, I saw Maiko teach
the same page Risa taught in CI 6R. Maiko was teaching her homeroom, 1B. Like Risa,
Maiko spent most of the class covering the basic dialogue, but she had a reason for this:
she wanted students to understand that the word order for sentences with “be” differs from
those with regular verbs (Subject Verb Complement versus Subject Verb Object). It should
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be noted that in English, the grammatical function of a word is determined by its sentence
position (i.e. we know that a word is an object or complement because it follows a verb).
In Japanese, on the other hand, the grammatical function of a word is determined by the
post-position particle on it (ha, ga, de, o, ni). Therefore, Japanese word order allows more
flexibility than that of English. Because the strict nature of English word order is not second
nature to Japanese learners, it is common for English teachers in Japan to explicitly teach
the primary sentence structures of English (SV, SVC, SVO, SVOC, SVOO). To do this,
Maiko employed a unique system for teaching the major word order patterns of English to
Japanese learners developed by a former JHS teacher (Tajiri, 2014).
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8.2.1.1 CI 4M Event
On this day, Maiko taught the second word pattern (Subject-verb-complement) and
applied the key sentence in the basic dialogue to it. Extract 8.2.1 shows how she introduced
the second pattern as well as the diagram of the sentence pattern she used (Tajiri, 2014).
Extract 8.2.1 Introducing Pattern 2
M: OK, one more pattern. ((She shows the above diagram on the 1
projector)) 2
M: This is pattern 2. What is that thing that is ‘equals.’ 3
S: Equals. 4
M: Watashih ha, tatoeba, watashi ha seito desu. I [=I am, for 5
example, I am a student. I] 6
S: I 7
M: I? 8
S: I, how do I say it? 9
S2: I like student? ((Ss and James laugh)) 10
M: Watashi ha seito ga suki desu. [=I like students.] 11
M: After I? So when it was “I” you used “am.” For “you” 12
Ss: are 13
M: We used ‘are.’ 14
M: There is one more. It is “is.” “Kare ha” becomes “he is.” So, 15
“Takeshi ha” is “Takeshi is”. These three words are ways of 16
writing “be.” Their original form is “be.” But, with “I” it is 17
“am,” with “you,” it is “are,” with “he” it is “is.” These three 18
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words are all from “be.” 19
((Abbreviated))
M: So, today’s goal is to learn the word order, so I want you to 20
learn the pattern. When you use either of the three forms ((The 21
word forms are “am,” “are,” “is.”)) what kind of sentence does 22
it become? For example, in “I am a Giants fan.” What is equal to 23
what? 24
Ss: (mumbling) 25
M: “I” and 26
S: “giants fan.” 27
M: Equals “giants fan.” “I” equals “giants fan.” If I say, “you are 28
happy”? 29
S: “You” equal “happy.”30
Above, Maiko tried to elicit from students that the ‘be’ verb functions as ‘equals’
and that the word order cannot be changed. Some students made jokes as in Line 10, but
this did not affect her presentation and the students attempted to answer her questions.
Before teaching Pattern 2, Maiko had reviewed Pattern 1 (Essentially, SVO). After
the explanation of Pattern 2, she had students do an activity in which they formed groups
of four and made as many Pattern 1 and 2 sentences as possible using word cards. Extract
8.2.2 shows Maiko explaining the activity.
Extract 8.2.2 Explaining the Activity
M: OK, we are going to do some word order training. There are 1
cards inside these envelopes. Cards with an asterisk have bonus 2
points. ((Some students clap)) As a group, please order the 3
cards. You should compete in teams of four and all write down 4
your sentences in your notebook. ((Abbreviated) After you have 5
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written the sentences, a representative of your group should go 6
to either Hall Sensei or me and read your sentences. If you are 7
correct, we will tell you. Also, after you read your sentence, 8
give the Japanese translation. The team that wins gets a … 9
S: (xxxx) 10
M: ((She agrees with S’s proposal and students show that they are 11
excited. She then gives the word order charts to each group.)) 12
I will give the chart to each group please look at this while 13
you write. ((Abbreviated)). After everyone has finished 14
writing. Shhh! ((Students are making noise.)) Make sure that 15
you have divided the work and when you are finished come and 16
show it. OK? 17
S: Yes. 18
M: Then, make groups of four.19
After students had finished writing the sentences, they continuously approached me
(Hall Sensei) to have them checked. The extract shows possible factors for the activity’s
success: Maiko had conceived of features to make the activity appealing (Line 2), her
instructions on how to proceed were clear (Lines 3 - 9; Lines 13 - 17), she had found a
way for students to get feedback on their language (Lines 5 – 8), she had provided some
extrinsic motivation (Line 9), and she had conceived of a way for every student in each
group to be involved in the task (Lines 13 – 17). Finally, she had explained the activity
in two minutes 10 seconds and managed to keep students’ attention. Line 15 shows that
students became a little excited, but Maiko was always in control.
After students made groups, Maiko elicited the procedures of the activity from them
one more time. When the activity started, a member from each group ran to the front of
the class and got an envelope of four cards. The group members reordered the cards
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together and then wrote the sentence individually in their notebooks. Upon completion,
they approached either Maiko or me to confirm whether it was correct. If so, they would
return the envelope and repeat the process. There were 20 sentences in all, and after the
activity was finished, Maiko reviewed the correct answer for each one. By the time the
activity had ended, more than 10 minutes remained in the class. Maiko gave the students
a jumping task, in which they had to approach me individually and ask me any question
in English. This lasted for 5 minutes and 30 seconds and most class members were able
to do this.
8.2.1.2 CI 4M Interpretation
The criticality of this incident lay in the contrast between the smooth conduct of this
class and Risa’s struggle with the same material. In the event itself, I was able to identify
effective pedagogical techniques she used to help students learn the textbook content. In
the post-class discussion, I would learn that another factor for her success was the
guidance she gave students outside English class.
Maiko said that as a homeroom teacher for first-year students, she had to focus on
shitsuke or discipline. This involved how to bow and say greetings, how to store shoes in
the cubbies, and how to wear school uniforms. For bowing, there were three different
degrees of prostration students were expected to do depending on the situation. When
class began, students were expected to bow deeply and in unison. For greetings, students
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were expected to say good morning, good afternoon, etc. in a loud voice.22 The shoe
cubbies (or lockers), at the school entrance, were where the students put their outdoor
shoes immediately after entering the school and changed to their indoor shoes. The
outdoor shoes had to be stored in the cubby neatly. Maiko said that there was a committee
of students in the homeroom who checked to make sure that shoes were stored correctly.
With school uniforms, students were expected to tuck their shirts in, wear long socks, and
have their name-plates and school badges pinned to the proper areas. Maiko said that she
spent as much of her free time as possible in her homeroom. She observed what the
students talked about and the different student relationships. Students in her homeroom
also wrote daily diaries (seikatsu no kiroku), and Maiko spent an hour each day reading
and commenting on them. Therefore, in addition to being in charge of all aspects of
students’ discipline in school, through the daily diaries Maiko was able to monitor and
guide students’ lives outside school. Given how dedicated and involved Maiko was in the
shitsuke of the students and the close bond she had formed with them, I thought that they
would be likely to give her an honest effort in whatever activity she wanted them to do.
8.2.2 CI 5M Practice and Puzzles: CLT gone too far? (July 7, 2014)
This CI was selected because it made me question the appropriateness of a
communicative approach for this particular content, even though the teachers’ objective,
22 In schools where students are considered to be properly behaved, they will greet visitors with a
loud konnncihiwa (good afternoon) when passing them in the hallway.
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as written in Section 3.4, was to teach a weak form of CLT. Second, I was impressed with
Maiko’s perseverance and the response of the students.
8.2.2.1 CI 5M Event
Maiko was teaching the humdrum structure shown in Extract 8.2.3. The goal of the
lesson, according to the textbook, was to be able to introduce as well as ask and answer
questions about objects surrounding you or a friend (Kairyudo, 2011a, p. 50). Extract
8.2.3 starts off with Maiko stopping the students while they are practicing the basic
dialogue in pairs because they are not doing the performance as she intended. This was
notable for me because it was the first time I had seen Maiko exhibit a little frustration
with the students’ efforts.
Extract 8.2.3 Students not following the dialogue
M: Um, you guys completely did not understand the directions. 1
Well, if you don’t look at anything and don’t use anything and 2
say, “This is your bag. Is that you bag?” No one will 3
understand. What does “This is my bag” mean? 4
SS: ((Students answer)) 5
M: Yes, yes. If you don’t have a bag, it’s strange to say, isn’t 6
it? 7
S: (xxxxxx) 8
M: Yes, yes. And where do you look when you say, is that your bag? 9
Where do you look? 10
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S: (xxxx) 11
M: That’s right. It is very strange to say it while not looking at 12
the bag, please be careful.13
Here, Maiko expected students to use their bags and perform the dialogue with
gestures. However, students in the class repeated the dialogue without showing that they
understood it by using the bags as props. Thus, Maiko implored them to use the bags and
gestures.
Although the students seemed to understand what they had to do, they continued to
struggle with this dialogue. Extract 8.2.4 shows the dialogue students were expected to
master and how two students, Jin and Karen, performed the dialogue for Maiko. Students
performed the dialogue in pairs substituting the objects with the words in the list to the
right of the dialogue. Each pair had to perform in front of either Maiko or me to confirm
that they had learned it. After that, they were to write down their exact dialogue in their
notebooks.
Extract 8.2.4 Jin and Karen performing the dialogue in front of Maiko
Jin: This is my pencil, is that your pencil Karen? 1
M: Where are you looking? Where should you be pointing? 2
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Jin: Is that your pencil Karen? 3
Karen: No it is. 4
M: No, it isn't. 5
Karen: No, it isn't. This is my mechanical pencil? Is that your 6
mechanical pencil, Jin? 7
Jin: Yes, it's. Yes, it is. 8
M: Not yes, you don’t have a mechanical pencil. 9
Jin: Why am I holding a pencil? 10
M: Alright、no it isn't. 11
Jin: No it's, no it. 12
M: isn't. 13
Jin: isn't. 14
M: Write it down in your notebook, okay? 15
8.2.2.2 CI 5M Interpretation
In the Course of Study for foreign language education in junior high schools, the
following is written about conducting communicative activities (MEXT, 2012): “In such
activities as exchanging thoughts and feelings by using the English language, students
should be encouraged to think of the expressions appropriate to the specific scene and
situation.” In open-class conferences given by the local BOE, I usually hear teachers’
counselors discuss the importance of students’ understanding the shiyou no bamen or the
situation in which the language they are studying is used. In Extract 8.2.5, below, when I
asked Maiko about something unexpected that happened in the previous class, she jumped
right in with how difficult it was to teach “this” and “that” (Line 3 - 4) and later discussed
how students did not use the words as she wanted them to (Lines 6 - 9).
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Extract 8.2.5 Maiko’s pedagogical puzzle
J: OK, so did anything happen in this class that surprised you or, 1
went against your expectation or- 2
M: -Well, I taught this page to the other class and it is really 3
hard to teach this and that. 4
J: Ah! Well, what's hard about it? 5
M: I think that they understand ‘this’ and ‘that’ means but they 6
don't use it appropriately. Like is ‘this’ your bag without 7
doing anything. Is that your bag? Yes, it is. They just repeat 8
the dialogue. 9
J: Why do you think that is? 10
M: They don't understand what kind of situation they're going to 11
use this dialogues. 12
J: And what kind of situation do you use that dialogue? 13
M: Well, as like some student says when so many bags are here and 14
somebody is not sure which bag is 15
J: Uh huh 16
M: That kind of situation. 17
J: OH, that kind of situation. 18
M: Whose pen is this but they don't know whose so this is my pen 19
is that your pen. That kind of situation. 20
J: Oh, that is the situation. OK. But they don't have that 21
situation in their heads. It is difficult to understand. 22
M: Uh huh. 23
J: Ahhh.OK. 24
M: So I let them to bring their stuff 25
J: Uh huh. 26
M: And do the dialogue in pairs. 27
J: And what was the effect of that? 28
M: Um, some students used like this is my pen is that your pen? 29
But some students. Even if they have a pen in their hands but 30
this is my pen, is that your pen? They don't 31
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J: They don't act it out. So they don't imagine the situation. 32
M: Un.33
According to Maiko, the reason for the students’ problems is that they cannot
understand the situation (Lines 11 - 12). Since it was hard for me also to imagine the
situation, I asked Maiko to explain it (Line 13). Maiko gave two possible situations (Lines
14 – 15; 19 - 20), but they were both so rare that I wondered if, for this particular lesson, it
might be better to let students learn and practice language without having to go to
extraordinary efforts to fit a situation to the phrases. A tenet of CLT is that communication
should be authentic (Richards & Rodgers, 2001), but in trying to make the scene authentic,
it became, in my opinion, artificial. The challenge of trying to think of a realistic situation
in which students could use a given language structure would become a major puzzle for
Maiko and me in the next few months.
Another notable element of the CI was that although the students struggled, Maiko
continued to push them and the students continued to try. It made me think that perhaps
even if the dialogue was not realistic, there could be indirect benefits to the students from
persevering and eventually mastering the dialogue. That is, they would perhaps gain the
confidence and will to learn challenging content in the future.
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9. Period 3: Partnering up (September, 2014 – March, 2015)
Period 2 saw Maiko thriving and Risa struggling. In Period 2, I had hopes that Risa
and I could work together to resolve some of the issues she had been experiencing but in
Period 3 my priorities changed. I came to accept that the major issues that she was facing
with Homeroom 1C would not be resolved, and I could not help her resolve them. Instead,
I joined her for the ride in experiencing the ups and downs of teaching Grade 1. In the
case of Maiko, because her school was to hold a lesson study conference in November, I
took a more active role in giving her suggestions for her teaching.
9.1 Risa: The Ups and Downs of Teaching 1C
Period 3 with Risa started off with some lows. In CI 8R, I became convinced that
the PPP-style lessons would not work for 1C. These lessons did not seem to have any
value for the students or Risa. In CI 9R, I sat through another lesson in which the boys of
1C were misbehaving, but I also thought I might have discovered the reason why. CI 10R
was a pleasant experience with 1C; students made speeches in class, and for the first time
I was able to take a more positive view of the class. CI 11R was my last time seeing 1C,
and I developed an appreciation for the progress that Risa had made with the class.
9.1.1 CI 8R Puzzles, Practice, TOT: An agonizing student-demonstration (September
26, 2014)
CI 8R was notable in that it marked the point at which I started to feel frustration
with the PPP style lessons and began to literally dread when Risa taught the page. It was
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difficult to see the same pattern of misbehavior on the part of the boys and Risa’s apparent
frustration.
9.1.1.1 CI 8R Event
This section might seem evaluative but it represents one of the moments in which I
was feeling frustration. When Risa’s class began on September, 26, 2014, the class started
well. The pace of the class was notably better; Risa taught the new words and five minutes
later wrote the day’s goal on the blackboard: ほかの人（１人)がしないことについて言える
ようにしよう [=Be able to say things that another person does not do]. Eight minutes into
the class, Risa started the basic dialogue. In my experience observing the PPP-style
lessons throughout Oyama Prefecture, it is typical for teachers to say the goal of the class
after introducing the basic dialogue. The goal is always related to being able to use the
language in the basic dialogue in a communicative situation.
Students were supposed to write the goal into their notebooks, as a way to record
their daily learning and study for tests. This was a classroom routine. The male students,
however, were not cooperating. Jiro did not have his notebook. Koki was talking to Ikeno-
kun, who was two seats to the side of him. Risa warned Ikeno-kun to stop spinning his
pen around in his hand to no avail; he continued to spin the pen rather than write in his
notebook. Risa had told Jiro to use another notebook but he was still not doing anything.
Risa also singled out Isamu for not writing in his notebook; Isamu liked to talk to friends
during class or face away from the teacher. I am not sure what he was doing when Risa
reprimanded him. Koki then turned around and talked to the boy behind him. Koki was
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sitting in the middle of the front row of the class, and his act of turning around could have
been a direct challenge to Risa’s authority. It seemed that even something as simple as
asking the students to copy the day’s goal into their notebooks was challenging.
Despite these issues, Risa made progress teaching this page. Thirty-six minutes into
the class, they had finished speaking, and Risa called on two students, Takeshi, a talented
but not-always cooperative student, and Ikeno-kun, who had arguably become the self-
anointed class comedian, to demonstrate the speaking practice in the textbook before the
whole class. Every action by Ikeno-kun seemed to be done to test Risa in some way, and
I wondered why she would want to call on him. Extract 8.1.1 shows Takeshi’s and Ikeno-
kun’s demonstration as well as Risa’s reactions. Takeshi was responsible for drink coffee
and play tennis, and Ikeno-kun for have a dog/cat.
Extract 9.1.1 Speaking practice between Risa, Takeshi, and Ikeno
R: OK, loud please. Please say it louder. 1
Takeshi: ((Inaudible.)) (xxxx) 2
R: OK, Bill doesn't drink coffee. OK, next. 3
Takeshi: ((Barely audible.)) Bill doesn't play tennis.° 4
R: Bill doesn't play tennis. Thank you. OK, then, please 5
listen others, please look at them. OK, three, four, 6
three, four. Ikeno-kun, number three and number four 7
please. 8
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Ikeno-kun: ((Stands up and faces slightly toward the wall when 9
he should face the class.)) 10
R: It's not front. 11
Ikeno-kun: <<bubububbu°>> ((Purposefully mumbles his words at a 12
fast pace. After he is finished one student claps and 13
then more students follow.)) 14
R: Ikeno-kun 15
Ikeno-kun: Itta yo [=I said it.] 16
R: Mina no hou ni muite tsugi kara happyou wo shimashou 17
ne. Kochira ha kabe da kara ne, kochira gawa ni muita 18
hou ga mina ni kikiyasui desu yo.[=Let’s face 19
everyone and do the presentation, ok? You just faced 20
the wall, right? If you face in the direction towards 21
everyone, it is easier to hear]. ((To the class.)) 22
OK, Bill doesn't have a dog, and Bill doesn't have a 23
cat. Kono “doesn't” wo tsukatte shikkari 24
hanasemashita. [=You were able to speak well using 25
doesn’t.]26
9.1.1.2 CI 8R Interpretation
Immediately after this dialogue, I made a remark in my field notes that this was a CI
for me. Throughout the lesson, the students had been uncooperative, but this particular
incident with Ikeno-kun and Takeshi triggered a strong feeling of frustration in me. The
scene was representative of a continuous process I had observed. Risa would go to great
lengths to give instructions and guidance to students on how to do an activity in a PPP
lesson, only to receive minimal cooperation from many of the male students. The exercise
in this scene was a simple substitution drill whose content was irrelevant. Previously,
Risa had spent approximately three minutes explaining the activity and having the
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students repeat drink coffee/ have a dog/ have a cat (see the figure in Extract 9.1.1). It
took the class less than 45 seconds to finish the activity.
In Extract 9.1.1, Risa had asked Ikeno-kun and Takeshi to do a demonstration. In
Lines 2 and 4, Takeshi, who had the ability to do this easily, barely uttered either sentence.
This also would have been simple for Ikeno-kun, who, when called upon, faced the wall
instead of the class (Lines 8 – 9) and intentionally uttered each sentence unintelligibly
(Line 11). When Risa challenged him on this, Ikeno-kun challenged back insisting that
he did say it (Line 16). Risa told Ikeno-kun that he should face the class because it would
be easier to hear. Here Risa is advising him on how to give a better presentation, but the
deeper issue, in my opinion, was, that Ikeno and Takeshi were questioning the value of
the activity itself. As mentioned earlier, linguistically the exercise was easy for them to
do but, as I never saw them make a real effort in this kind of exercise, I concluded that
they must not see the value in it. CI 10R, which appears later, shows the type of activity
that 1C would be responsive to.
Throughout the academic year with 1C, I had consistently seen Risa and the class
spend so much time on these simple practice and communicative activities from the PPP
lessons. Risa would introduce with a great deal of care and over-explain to the students
as if the activity were beyond their capacity. However, it was not too difficult for them.
The class could finish the practice in CI 8R in less than 45 seconds. In the last line of
Extract 9.1.1, she complimented all the students for being able to use doesn’t in the
practice. In my opinion, such praise was unwarranted; this practice was meant to be done
quickly. My own frustration might have clouded my ability to make non-partial
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observations, but I felt frustration not only at the students’ behavior, but at the way in
which Risa was conducting the class.
9.1.2 CI 9R Puzzles: Amae boys (September 26, 2014)
In our talks in Period 3, I did not try to focus Risa’s attention on specific parts of the
class as I had done in Period 2. Instead I made an effort to have Risa ‘frame the
experience.’ The interview coding shows that many of the topics brought up by Risa
pertained to the male students. On September 26, 2014, something that Risa said about
the boys in the post-class interview provided me with a possible explanation as to why
the boys of 1C were uncooperative.
9.2.2.1 CI 9R Event
Our post-class conversation took place after my moment of frustration described in
CI 8R. At the beginning of our conversation, Risa expressed her frustration with 1C.
Before the conversation shown in Extract 9.1.2, I asked Risa if she had talked to other
first-grade homeroom teachers about the behavior of 1C. At the beginning of the extract,
Risa stated that the boys of 1C behaved well in the other classes.
Extract 9.1.2 Risa’s assessment of the male students
R: ((abbreviated)) in other classes [1C boys] can listen. 1
J: They cAn 2
R: They can listen to the classes and concentrate. And they say 3
they can't do, but, maybe amaeteiru [=they are spoiled]. 4
J: Amaeteiru? 5
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R: Yeah. 6
J: To you? 7
R: Yeah, I am so, I think, I am not so strict so, 8
J: Uh hm 9
R: Da kara, da to omou [=I think that is why]. Yeah they say, so. 10
J: Well, I see that you do have rules. You dO [give] chuui [= 11
warnings] and things like that. What would you say is the 12
difference between a strict teacher and you? 13
R: I try to but 14
J: Uh huh. 15
R: But they won't listen. 16
J: Uh hm. 17
R: Because, nandarou [=I wonder?], they want to show themselves 18
better good to other teachers. 19
J: So they want to show their good side or their kinben no gawa 20
[=diligent side]、right? 21
R: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 22
J: To other teachers. But they don't want to show it to you. 23
R: Sotsuzura ga ii to iu ka. [=I guess you can say they have good 24
tactics.] 25
9.2.2.2 CI 9R Interpretation
According to Risa, the students could listen and concentrate with other teachers, but,
with her, they were amaeteiru. Amaeteiru is derived from the adjective amae which can
be used to describe people who are too dependent on the kindness or leniency of others
(Doi, 2001). Amae is frequently used in Japan to describe one’s own children or students,
but it is difficult to translate into other languages. I interpreted Risa’s amae to mean that
the male students had some kind of psychological need to be mischievous. In Lines 18 –
25 Risa says that the boys want to show their good side to other teachers but not to her.
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She concludes that they were being tactful (Line 24). In other words, their worst behavior
seems to be saved for Risa because they are amae towards her. From my experience of
watching how much the male students seemed to enjoy themselves when Risa became
upset with them, or when they received special attention for not being about to do an
activity, their uncooperative behavior was not because they disliked Risa but rather
because they felt some kind of attachment to her. The two boys causing Risa the most
problems seemed to be Koki, who continuously sat in class with his back turned to the
teacher as he talked to whoever was sitting behind him, and Ikeno-kun. Their smiles and
laughs seemed to indicate that they enjoyed the attention they received from Risa when
they misbehaved. Emotional attachment is one of the psychological states behind amae.
Over the course of the year, Risa had tried the following tactics to change the boys’
behavior:
• Talk to each boy individually and persuade them to change their behavior.
• Change the class seating arrangement, so that Koki and Ikeno-kun would be farther
apart.
• Recruit class leaders to help her to rein in their behavior.
• Encourage them to participate in intra-homeroom contests such as the choral
competition.
In the end, according to my field notes and recordings, none of these tactics seemed
to change the students’ behavior. Ikeno-kun and Koki continued to receive a lot of
attention from Risa inside and outside class. Overall, this CI made me aware of a new
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classroom dynamic that was preventing Risa from teaching CLT. The next CI shows the
type of class in which Risa could enjoy some cooperation from the boys.
9.1.3 CI 10 R Practice and Puzzles: 1C’s speeches go well! (December 12, 2014)
On this day, as part of My Project 2 in Sunshine 1, students in 1C were to give a
short speech about a friend or famous person. The class was critical for me in a number
of ways. First, I was able to observe all the students in the class, not just the disrupters.
Second, although the usual male students were being unruly, everyone cooperated and
participated. Third, the criteria for judging the speeches struck me. I wondered why there
was no evaluation of content. Finally, I was struck by how quiet the female students were
when giving their speeches.
9.1.3.1 CI 10R Event
Figure 9.1.1 shows the handout of the speech criteria and their translations. The
students had to complete this rubric for each speech they listened to. The goal was to
“give a speech introducing someone that is understandable to others.” The criteria to meet
Figure 9.1.1 Speech criteria
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this goal were volume of voice, pronunciation/accent, and eye contact. Students were also
supposed to write the good points about a speech, but it was not clear if these good points
were intended to be about the content of the speech or delivery.
When students gave a speech, they could either discuss a famous person or introduce
a member of the class. The vast majority of students introduced a friend, but one student,
Akane, as shown below, used it as an opportunity to share her interest in Japanese history
with the rest of the class by introducing the historian Tetsuo Owada. Risa used a lottery
style to determine who would give a speech. If she drew the number of the student (each
student in a class has an identification number), then that student would give his or her
speech. In Extract 9.1.3, Risa had just called on Akane. Akane’s evaluation sheet in the
extract shows that she had received an ‘A’ for loudness and a ‘B’ for pronunciation and
eye contact on Risa’s marking sheet.
Extract 9.1.3 Akane’s grades and speech
R: OK, then next person is 42. 1
MS1: yonjuuni [=forty-two]? 2
MS2: yonjuuni [=forty-two]. 3
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R： Iwanakutemo honnin ga wakaru. Itte agenakutemo daijoubu desu. 4
[=The speaker will understand even if you do not say it, so 5
you don’t have to say anything.] 6
MS1: Kikoenai! Kikoenakatta! [=I can't hear it! I couldn't hear 7
it!] 8
MS2: (xxxx) 9
R: Shhh,daijoubu [=It's ok]. Be quiet. Look up please. 10
((The class claps as Akane walks to the front.)) 11
Akane: Hi everyone. This is Tetsuo Owada. He is a writer. He is very 12
wonderful. He is a teacher in Shizuoka University. He writes 13
a lot of books. He is from Shizuoka. He is, he is, he is from 14
Waseda University. I respect him. Thank you. ((Students clap 15
when Akane has finished.))16
When the extract begins, the male students are their typical noisy selves, repeating
after Risa, who tells them to be quiet in Line 4, and further signals to be quiet in Line 10.
However, when Akane, whose existence I was not aware of until then, walked to the front
of the class, most students clapped (Line 11). It was the first time I had seen a student
receive encouragement from 1C to do an English-related task. In Lines 12 to 16, Akane
gives her speech, which to me was the best one of the day, and the students clapped again
when she finished. This was the first time I had been able to focus my attention on the
female students in the class.
Seeing the speeches also enabled me to observe how reluctant some female students
were to speak. This is shown in the extract 9.1.4 below. Yuka gave an unintelligibly quiet
speech and received a “C” for volume, a “B” for pronunciation, and a “D” for eye contact.
Yuka spoke about a classmate, Takako, who stood next to her as she gave her speech.
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Most students in this lesson gave speeches about classmates, who accompanied them
when the speech was given. Their friends served as visual aides.
Extract 9.1.4 Who is Takako?
R: Next person is, 32. 1
((Yuka and Takako walk to the front. They are both wearing 2
surgical masks. Yuka reads her speech looking down and 3
speaking in a fast, quiet, and almost unintelligible voice.)) 4
Yuka: <<This is my (xxxx). She is (xxx) She is (xxx) Thank you.° >> 5
((Students clap))6
I wondered how Yuka could receive a B on pronunciation and accent when she could
barely be heard. That was the same score as Akane, who gave an intelligible speech with
interesting content. Based on Risa’s grades, I compared the boys’ and girls’ scores on
volume. Seven of 15 girls received a mark of ‘C’ or ‘D’, which signified that they had
spoken almost inaudibly. On the other hand, only two of thirteen boys received a mark of
‘C.’ This was symptomatic of a persistent issue with 1C: the female students did not have
a voice in this class.
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9.1.3.2 CI 10R Interpretation: Experiencing success
In our post-class interview, Risa and I discussed the reason why students were
behaving better, the rationale behind the speech criteria, and the reason the girls were
quiet. First, Risa explained recent developments in the students’ behavior (Extract 9.1.5).
Extract 9.1.5 Why students are behaving better
R: Uh, [students] tried to listen and if someone, didn't, isn't to 1
listening. Other people will say, please listen or be quiet to 2
them, 3
J: They say be quiet. You know, in fact, I heard a student tell 4
another student to be quiet today. So, how did that happen? 5
Would you say that this is a change, something new? 6
R: Ahhhh, maybe change. 7
J: Yeah, mae ni nakatta kedo saikin aru koto to iemasuka [=Can you 8
say this is something that this is something recent] They try to 9
listen and then- 10
R: - Yeah, yes. 11
J: OK. And, so you, so you, how, what was the kikkake [=trigger]. 12
How? 13
R: The kikkake. I talked to stu, students a lot than before. 14
J: You talked to students more than before↓ 15
R: And, who can be a leader of the class, or who can be, can 16
control, who can control the class, especially boys?17
That day, Risa said that during the speech, students were reminding others to either
listen or be quiet (Lines 1 to 3), which I also acknowledged (Lines 4 – 6). When I asked
the reason for this change, Risa indicated that she had been talking to students more about
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helping her control the class and becoming leaders. She especially wanted the assistance
of the boys (Line 14; 16 – 17).
Two male students whom Risa mentioned as being helpful in controlling others,
Kota and Nakano, were frequently introduced as friends in the speeches of the disruptive
boys. It interested me when Risa said that she had sought the support of the male leaders.
As the official head of the class, gakkyuuinchou, was a girl, I wondered what kind of
contributions female leaders made. The girls did not seem as influential as the boys.
Risa said that she had done the speeches in other classes, and the girls were not as
quiet as those in 1C. Risa had told the girls in all classes beforehand to speak in a loud
voice, but contrary to her expecetations this did not have an effect on 1C. In Extract 9.1.6,
Risa and I discussed the reasons for this.
Extract 9.1.6 Why the girls are quiet (1)
R: Uh, maybe, one reason is that have not confident, confident to 1
their sentences or their pronunciations. 2
J: Well, why aren't they confident? 3
R: (xxx) 4
J: Yeah, what are the reasons for. Yeah, so one of the reasons why 5
they're so quiet and even when you encourage them is that they 6
are not confident. So, why aren't they… 7
R: Why, why, (Long pause) The last, yesterday, finish writing the 8
speech and I told them practice reading 9
J: Uh hm. 10
R: But maybe the time was not enough and I so could not tell them, 11
teach them each pronunciation. The word or each word so already 12
they learn everything so I thought they can but maybe they 13
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couldn't the time, the practice time was not enough. 14
J: But was their practice time any different from the other 15
classes? 16
R: Nope. 17
J: OK. 18
R: I did the same as other classes. 19
Risa says that girls in 1C are not confident. The reason behind their lack of
confidence in the speech lesson was that Risa could not teach them pronunciation
beforehand (Lines 11 – 14). By this, Risa meant how to say the words. However, when I
asked her if speech preparation time in 1C differed from the other classes (Lines 15 - 16),
she said no. In Extract 9.1.7, I continued to pursue this issue.
Extract 9.1.7 Why the girls are quiet (2)
J: OK, you did the same as other classes. Could there be some 1
kind of ningentekina kankei no koto [= people relationship 2
problem] or = 3
R: = Ahhh, Boys, uh, so talkative, keep on talking so= 4
J: =Uh hm. 5
R: (xxxxx) So, shame? 6
J: They're ashamed or they feel shame when, when 7
R: When they talk in front of … 8
J: They feel shame when they talk in front of 9
R: Other boys, because the boys talks what they think and because 10
iitai koto nandemo sugu iu kara. [=They immediately say 11
whatever they want to.] 12
J: Ahhh ... OK 13
R: I can't say well but - 14
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J: -maybe, alright, I understand. 15
R: That's one reason I think. 16
J: Tatoeba, dono you na iitai koto? [=For example, what kind of 17
things come to their mind?] 18
R: This class? Last class? People say omae no koe ga chiisai [= 19
Your voice is quiet]. 20
According to Risa the girls felt shame talking in front of boys (Lines 8; l0 - 12)
because the boys said whatever they wanted (Lines 10 – l1) often at the expense of the
girls. Risa gave an example from the last class that when one of the girls was talking,
“people” shouted out that she was speaking quietly (Lines 19 - 20) (Because the topic
was boys making it harder for girls to speak, Risa was referring to “boys” when she said
“people.”). These boys used the word omae (adding no to omae makes it possessive),
which means “you” and in this context had a slightly derogatory nuance as usually
someone of a higher status uses it to address a person of lower status. In this case, the boy
would be speaking as if he had authority over the girl. This is similar to what Rampton
(2006, p. 62) calls “hyper-involved” behavior by male students. Hyper-involved boys are
exuberant in their classroom participation to the extent that they assume some of the
traditional teacher roles such as providing evaluation. Rampton (2006) found that hyper-
involvement on the part of boys could lead to the exclusion of girls in class discussions.
Risa revealed that this kind of behavior by the boys in 1C suppressed the girls’ willingness
to speak out.
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The last major topic was the criteria for the speeches and why there was no focus on
the content. Risa talked about her rationale for choosing loudness, pronunciation, and eye
contact as criteria in Extract 9.1.8 below.
Extract 9.1.8 Speech criteria
R: Because in the speech, if people can't listen, it's not good 1
speech I think so the big voice, the loud voice and when giving 2
speech eye contact is so important I think so I chose eye 3
contact. And some people are not confident their pronunciation 4
but it is so important to try to talk in better, eigo rashii 5
[=English-like]. And speaking, and I want to try to them, like 6
eigo rashii English. Not Japanese-English.7
Volume is important so other people can hear. Eye contact, she said, is also
important, but unfortunately I did not follow up to find out why. Pronunciation is
important because students should speak eigo-rashii (English-like) English; one can infer
that Risa did not want students to have a strong Japanese accent. I asked her if students
could evaluate whether or not their peers were speaking “English-like” English (Extract
9.1.9).
Extract 9.1.9 Can students evaluate others’ pronunciation?
R: Yeah, it is difficult for them maybe. But, I told them, maybe, 1
like for example, I like basuketto bo-ru [=basketball]. It is 2
very Japanese. Or Katakana ((This is the Japanese system for 3
writing foreign words)). So if they try to, try to speak more 4
eigo-rashii [=English-like], it's ok. So, I want to evaluate, I 5
want speakers to take care of hatsuon [=pronunciation]. Please 6
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listen to their hatsuon [=pronunciation] so please take care. 7
Ah, ok. I want to, I want to say that about this to them. But 8
yes, it is hard to evaluate the hatsuon akusento [=accent] for 9
them. 10
J: So basically, hatuson [=pronunciation] is katakana no eigo de 11
hanashiteinai [=they are not speaking katakana English] 12
R: Ah, yes.13
Japanese has two phonetic writing systems in addition to the Chinese characters
(kanji): hiragana and katakana. Katakana is used for words borrowed from a foreign
language. As Risa indicated in Line 2, the pronunciation of ‘basketball’ in katakana
writing would be basuketto bo-ru. For English words that exist in Japanese, many
students will say the katakana pronunciation rather than the English one (e.g. basuketto
boru rather than /bǽskətbɔ̀l/). Although the importance that Risa placed on pronunciation
was evident, I wanted to know how she evaluated content. I asked her what she expected
students to write as ‘good points’ on the evaluation sheet (Extract 9.1.10).
Extract 9.1.10 Risa’s expectations for ‘good points’
R: Ah, yes, and, uh, I expected, many people give, bring their 1
photos and in the class not so much but in other classes, 2
showing, showing photos and using that very effectively. So 3
shashin ga ate, wakariyasukatta [=There was a picture, and it 4
was easy to understand.] 5
J: Ah, 6
R: Or, koe ga okikute wakariyasukatta [=The voice was loud, and it 7
was easy to understand]. 8
J: So basically, naiyou yori supi-chi no waza sono mono wo hyouka 9
shiteiru [=rather than content, you are evaluating the skill of 10
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giving a speech]. 11
S: un, un. 12
Risa indicates that good points do not refer to the content of the speech but rather
the manner in which the speech was given. When I suggested that Risa should consider
directing students’ attention to the content of the speech by having them take notes about
the content, Risa said that she had tried that before and it distracted students from listening.
Therefore, she had tried the current method of asking students to listen to the speech and
quickly evaluate afterwards.
Overall, this class showed that students were receptive to giving speeches and would
cooperate. However, the male students still dominated the class through their hyper-
involvement. Because Risa had students’ cooperation, she was able to experiment with
different formats for the speeches and see the results of her experiments, developing her
own style. For the PPP-style lessons, uncooperative student behavior made this
impossible, and Risa never seemed comfortable in that kind of lesson. In fact, the next
PPP-style lesson I saw in January was again chaotic. In a reading class I observed in
February for 1C, student behavior was orderly enough to allow Risa to teach the class.
This supports my point in CI 8R that PPP lessons and 1C were a bad combination.
9.1.4 CI 11R Practice: A final perspective (March 6, 2015)
On my last day, I was not able to observe 1C, but Risa had arranged for me to visit
the class for 10 minutes to say good bye. It was my first and last chance to take the stage
and share with them my impressions of the past year. I wanted to give a strong message
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to the boys who I felt through their constant disruptions were preventing Risa from
focusing on her teaching and improving her craft. I was also feeling tremendous gratitude
toward Risa who had shared her ups and downs with me, the bumbling TOT, when the
benefit to her was not clear. In my last visit to 1C, I decided to appeal to the class to
appreciate her efforts more.
9.1.4.1 CI 11R Event
Below is an excerpt from my fieldnotes of my last talk with 1C.
Extract 9.1.11. Saying good bye to 1C
Standing in front of the class, there was complete silence and I
had the students’ undivided attention. It felt like I was seeing them
for the first time. They looked like innocent children, not like the
devious boys and shy girls I saw when standing in the back of the
class. The mission of my talk was to make the students appreciate
Risa. I talked about meeting up with “Toshiya,” a boy whom I taught
when I was an ALT a few years after he finished JHS. He never made any
effort in English in JHS. Now he wanted to be a boxer but needed to
speak better English to go to Australia. I gave other examples of
grown people who told me they wished they had learned more English. I
told the students that they were young and did not know yet what their
dreams are, but that Risa was doing her best for them. I emphasized
that she worked very hard to plan classes and her mission was to get
them to learn to use English. I told them that not all teachers were
as dedicated as Risa. I emphasized to them that the basic ability to
use English would be useful to them someday, and that they should
appreciate Risa more.
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9.1.4.2 CI 11R Interpretation
Of the three teachers in this study, I spent the most time with Risa. Despite all the
difficulties she experienced, she never gave up and stood by her principles. The students
I saw in the last class were, for better or worse, a functioning homeroom despite the
difficult issues Risa was still grappling with. Lassila and Uitto (2016, p. 206) write that
the teacher-student relationship in Japan is based on close personal bonds (kakawari)
which require “interest in the well-being of the children and intimate knowledge about
them.” All our talks about 1C students demonstrated that Risa had this. Risa had her good
and bad days but, unlike Yuta, she never called herself a failure, nor did it seem that the
students were denying her authority as their homeroom teacher. The male students were
amae to her, but usually people are only amae to someone for whom they have some kind
of affection.
Before Risa and I said goodbye, in our last discussion, I asked her to give me five
principles she had developed over her first years of teaching. They are given below in her
own words.
Principle 1: The teacher must enjoy the class
R: Uh, recently I think that I have to enjoy the class and then [the 1
students] can enjoy the class and they can try to listen. And 2
maybe these days I couldn't enjoy. So, maybe students so, nandarou 3
[=nandarou], ochitsukanai [=can’t calm down]. I thought so the 4
first thing is that teacher should be nandarou [=I wonder] in good 5
mood or healthy and cheerful or enjoy the class. 6
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Principle 2: Continue to learn
R: That's the first thing for now, and, nandarou [=I wonder?]. And 1
I should know many things. And I have to keep studying or 2
learning. It's so important. I think about English. About 3
teaching English or other things.4
Principle 3: Checking student progress
R: Checking, for example word test, or speaking test, and how they 1
understand, how much they understand from my classes. Maybe this 2
year the checking, the checking is not enough. Was not enough 3
so, then, by checking that, I can improve the, my way of 4
teaching. So, and, how they feel nandarou [= I wonder]. They 5
trying or they want. I can know so, that's important I think. 6
Principle 4: Talking to students more
R: I need to talk to students more. To know about them. Maybe a 1
little close to last one but by talking with them I can 2
understand how much they understand what do they want to know or 3
learn so to understand themselves is so important. 4
((Abbreviated)) But, some students maybe I don't know so much, 5
Maybe I know only a little so, so I think I have to talk to 6
them. 7
Principle 5: Deepening understanding of the textbook content
R: I can teach them not only from the textbook. For example, we 1
studied about America then kanren shite [=related to that], how 2
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the country about other country or many things. Ah, to, to, to 3
know the what I teach. To know, to know, to understand what I 4
teach enough well and get more information about kanren suru 5
[=related]. 6
Principle 1 was mainly about not letting rambunctious students put her in a bad mood
because it would affect other students. This might have come from her trials with the male
students. Principle 2 was probably prompted by interesting workshops that she had
attended and advice from her superiors as to the importance of continuing to learn.
Principle 3 may be thought of as a measure to deal with the fact that there were a number
of students who did not learn much that year. Principle 4 was likely a reaction to Risa’s
attention being disproportionately directed toward a handful of students much of the time.
She learned the importance of paying attention to all students. Principle 5 reflects Risa’s
realization that knowing more about the subject matter of the prescribed lesson than what
was written in the textbook would yield benefits such as enabling her to design her own
activities and materials to supplement the content.
The CIs described in this section have depicted Risa’s struggles with teaching, but
in the end, as her principles showed, her dedication did not waiver and she was making
efforts to improve.
9.2 Maiko: Preparing for the Open School Conference and its Aftermath
The Open-school Conference (Gakkou koukai kenkyuukai) conducted at Shirakawa
JHS on November 11 was the highlight of my 18-month period with Maiko. This was an
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all-day research conference in which the school showed classes for all subjects in the
morning, invited a keynote speaker for the afternoon and had research meetings for each
subject after the keynote speech. The central research theme conducted across all subjects
was “developing a process of student learning through learner collaboration.”
Cooperative learning was conducted in each class and observers were given a class
seating diagram so they could observe how different students collaborated. These
observations were discussed in the subject research meeting. The conference was held
annually at one of three junior high schools and sponsored by the Ishimoto City BOE.
This year it was Shirakawa’s turn. My university played a supporting role in the
conference every year, and I usually served as the ‘English subject advisor’ for the
conference. This year, I would be an English subject advisor for Shirakawa JHS together
with a member of the Ishimoto BOE. Typically, the responsibilities of the English subject
advisors were to meet with the teachers once before the conference and comment on their
lesson plans and school research, then to attend the conference, observe the classes, and
give five to ten minutes of “advice” at the ending of the “post-class research meeting.”
Usually the BOE member would comment on the class based on the Course of Study, and
I would do so based on general ELT theory.
My role as an English advisor would have a slight effect on my working relationship
with Maiko in that she would expect me to give her some assistance in preparing for her
open-lesson. In my 12-year career at the university, I had done over 30 of these
conferences (2 to 4 a year). In my experience, the advisors give suggestions in the meeting
before the conference, but it is the decision of the teachers whether or not to follow the
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advice. Teachers who are confident in their own style teach as they want to, and those
with less experience prefer to have suggestions from the advisors. My new role in this
period would have an impact on this study in that, as an advisor, I would be obligated to
give Maiko suggestions and Maiko would be obligated to at least consider them.
Maiko faced two instructional puzzles in preparing a lesson for this event. First, she
had to think of a communicative activity featuring a situation in which students could use
the structure, “Are you ...?” Second, she had to devise a jumping task that would
encourage the type of cooperative learning her school was trying to foster. The first
challenge concerned mainstream English teaching principles, how to match CLT with
required content for students to learn; the second concerned the school research project,
how to match the English class with Shirakawa’s schoolwide curricular innovation, Sato
and Sato’s (2011) collaborative learning.
In the first CI, in which Maiko sought my advice for the class, I experienced first-
hand the challenge of trying to devise original activities compatible with the Sunshine
content which would promote student-to-student communication and collaborative
learning. The second CI was the open class itself, in which Maiko decided to scrap my
advice at the last second. In the third CI, I saw Maiko conduct a speaking test at the end
of the year and I finally developed a sense for realistic learning targets for Japanese JHS
students.
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9.2.1 CI 6M TOT, Puzzles: An attempt at dialogic talk (October 17, 2014)
In this CI, Maiko sought my ideas for an activity for her lesson in the open-school
conference, and after a lot of discussion, I obliged. This event became a CI because it was
the first time in a year I was formally playing the role of a TOT, and I could experience
first-hand the pedagogical puzzles Maiko faced. Furthermore, it was an extended attempt
at dialogic talk with Maiko.
9.2.1.1 CI 6M Event
In our post-class meeting on October 17, 2014, to my surprise, Maiko suggested
going over ideas for her lesson in the open-school conference the next month rather than
discussing what I had observed. She was ‘framing the experience’ (Edge, 2011). Extract
9.2.1 shows the page Maiko was to cover for the open class (Kairyudo, 2011a, p. 94) and
our initial discussion. Her plan was to cover the basic dialogue, listening, and speaking.
She wanted to modify let’s try and add a jumping task. Let’s try consisted of a card game
in which students asked each other whether they had an action card using the structure
“Are you ~ing?” Maiko planned on making a jumping task in which students would use
the structure in an authentic situation through cooperative learning and wanted to run her
idea by me.
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Extract 9.2.1 Maiko asks for help
M: I need some advice for my cl/asses/ 1
J: /Okay/ 2
M: /xxxxxx/ 3
J: /Alright/ I don't know if I have any advice but what are you 4
thinking? 5
M: Is it okay? 6
J: Yeah, it's fine. 7
((Abbreviated))
M: Okay, sorry, so now I'm teaching this [textbook chapter] and on 8
November 11, I am going to do this page ((The page shown 9
1. Goal
2. Basic dialogue
3. Listening
4. Speaking
5. Let’s try
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above)), and I can't think of any situations where we can use 10
ING forms except calling, talking on the phone. 11
J: Uh huh 12
M: So do you have any? 13
((Abbreviated))
M: I can think of many situations, “what is he doing,” “what is 14
she doing.” But, “are you” ↓ 15
J: Are you 16
M: I-N-G 17
J: Yeah 18
((Abbreviated))
M: And, I'm thinking of do, a little bit change this let’s try 19
activity. 20
J: Uh hm 21
M: Like make a skit or… 22
J: Um hm… okay. 23
M: I don't know if it's okay or not. 24
((Abbreviated))
M: So at the end of the [textbook chapter]. 25
J: Uh hm 26
M: I am going to let the students make skits like talking on the 27
phone. And one people ask to go out but the other people can't 28
go. So, I want them to - 29
J: -Ah! /okay/ 30
M: /make/ dialogues. 31
J: Uh /huh/ 32
M: /Um°/ 33
J: So, ah°, okay. 34
M: Um°= 35
J: =That's interesting. (…) Um, so, then, if we brainstorm = 36
M: = Um°= 37
J: when, like, I-N-G 38
M: = Un°= 39
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J: situations in which it is used. 40
M: = Un,°un°= 41
J: = So the first situation you said was, the action you are 42
doing now. 43
M: = Un,°un°= 44
J: =So talking on the phone. 45
M: Un° 46
Extract 9.2.1 shows Maiko asking me for advice and my struggling to figure out how
to help her. In Line 1, Maiko tells me she needs some advice and my ok overlapping with
her last word (Line 2) indicates that I had been anticipating she might ask for help.
However, I was a little nervous to give it, because I had become accustomed to being
exclusively an observer. In Lines 8 to 11, Maiko frames her puzzle as not being able to
think of situations for activities in which students can use the -ING verb. From Line 14,
she explains that this is particularly difficult for the structure ‘are you -ing,’ which she
must do for her lesson in the conference. Between Lines 19 and 24, she tells me that she
wants to make a skit for the let’s try at the end of the lesson, as she thinks she can
contextualise the language form through this activity. In Line 30, after Maiko had
discussed her goal for the end of the program or textbook unit, I had an epiphany, not
related to what she was discussing, and I interrupted her. I believed that Maiko and I could
think of an ideal situation for her skit in let’s try together that would impress everyone in
the open-school conference. From Line 36, I attempt to brainstorm possible situations.
Maiko’s frequent acknowledgement tokens which filled in the microsecond-long
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intervals between my utterances was a sign that she was listening attentively (Walsh,
2011), especially in Lines 41 and 44.
However, after spending a few minutes thinking about actual situations where “Are
you + ing?” could be used, I found it exceedingly difficult. Often, when I attempt to
brainstorm with a teacher in Japan, it results in continuous talk on my part and silence
from the teacher, which is exactly what happened in my conversation with Maiko. Extract
9.2.2 begins after I had just realized that I was giving a monologue about possible
situations and not being helpful to Maiko. I therefore made an effort to give the floor back
to her by asking how she planned to change let’s try. (She had actually already told me.)
This conversation evolved to a discussion of the concept behind jumping task and
revealed some of the conceptual issues she was grappling with.
Extract 9.2.2 What is a jumping task?
J: Um, alright, wait a minute. How are you thinking about changing 1
this? 2
M: Yeah, in let’s try they're going to use the cards here. That's 3
also, I think, a good practice for them. But, since we have to 4
set the jumping task. I was just wondering what was the 5
appropriate jumping task. 6
J: Ummmm, yeah, I guess the, these are just cards. Would the 7
jumping task be something real? 8
M: Real or um. I heard that one third of the students [should be 9
able to] achieve the jumping task so that means I can't set the 10
goal too high or too low so it's really difficult for me. 11
J: And then, can you explain to me the concept of the jumping task? 12
M: The concept is that one-third of students should accomplish the 13
goal. 14
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J: One-third, why one-third? 15
M: I don't know. Ota Sensei told me that 16
(Abbreviated))
J: So one-third of the students can accomplish but two-thirds 17
cannot. 18
M: Can try to achieve the goal. 19
J: And by trying to achieve the goal. 20
M: They help each other in their groups. 21
J: And so their ability- 22
M: -uh 23
J: OK. 24
M: As for us English teachers, we talked about the jumping task for 25
English classes that the students, I don't know how I can 26
explain it. It's not a high jump but, uh, a long jump. 27
J: OK, not a high jump but a long jump. Wow! 28
M: (laughs) 29
J: What's the difference between a high jump and a long jump? 30
M: Um, well for example. 31
J: Uh hm. 32
M: A high jump is when something is difficult for example. To read 33
the page is the common goal. But the jumping task, for the high 34
jump, is like to bring something too difficult like from the 35
newspapers or from high school textbooks for reading. If we 36
printed out and let the students read that's really difficult. 37
But long jump means to relate it to this page. And something, 38
like they can understand and if they use the dictionaries and 39
something like, if they try work on that then they can achieve 40
the goal. That is long jump. Like, to, how do you explain, to, 41
um, broaden themselves or to, um, huh, it's hard to explain. It 42
is something that is not too difficult.43
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Here we were able to ascertain the conceptual challenge for doing a jumping task.
Maiko needed to think of a task that approximately one-third of the students could
accomplish but that all students could learn from through the process of engaging in it.
The English department had modified the jump concept for their classes and differentiated
between a high and long jump. The former involved using authentic content apart from
the textbook page; the latter was a task building off the textbook page. However, the
desirable degree of difficulty was not clear. In Lines 13 - 14, Maiko said only one-third
of students should be able to accomplish the jumping task while in Lines 42-43, she said
that the long jump should not be too difficult. Setting the task at an appropriate degree of
difficulty, so that all students would benefit from trying it regardless of whether they were
successful, was the pedagogical puzzle.
I wanted to help Maiko think of a meaningful activity for the jumping task and
thought that perhaps reflecting on her ultimate goal for her students would help us think
of an activity. In Extract 9.2.3, I elicit from Maiko her goal.
Extract 9.2.3 Maiko’s ultimate goal
J: Okay, once upon a time you told me what your goal for your 1
students are. What is your goal for your students. Once upon a 2
time. Like your dream, your image. 3
M: Ahh. I forgot what I told you but like to be able to, uh, use 4
English. 5
((Abbreviated))
M: And, so, we have to solve many problems as we grow up and I 6
hope English will help them to solve those problems. 7
J: Uh hm. 8
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M: And to acquire English we have to brush up many skills to be 9
able to communicate with other people. To know about other 10
cultures. 11
J: Uh hm. 12
M: So … 13
J: Okay 14
M: And another goal is, not for everybody, but some of the 15
students, get an international job. Like to use English. 16
J: Uh hm, uh hm 17
M: And to like help people all over the world. That's another. 18
J: So quickly, can you talk a little bit about this? It's like 19
you, your class typically follows this format and at the ending 20
there is some kind of communication, how do you want students 21
to communicate? 22
M: How, uh, I want the students to, uh, to talk themselves and 23
also, how to talk, like to make eye contact. 24
J: Uh hm 25
M: To listen to others, or, um, I want to have them, uh, (xxx) 26
J: OK, you want them to learn how to talk. 27
M: Unn, un 28
J: OK, I see. So, how to talk means eye contact and what else? 29
M: And, listen carefully. And make a response. 30
In this extract, Maiko articulated her ultimate classroom goal, students being able to
use English, and then discussed how this goal extended outside the classroom: students
can help to solve the worlds’ problems in the future or get an international job. When I
followed up on how she wanted the students to communicate, Maiko answered that she
wanted students to be able to use English independently and know “how to talk, like to
make eye contact” (Lines 23 - 24) as well as being good listeners and being able to
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respond (Line 30). This last comment gave me an idea for a possible activity which is
shown in the extract below.
Extract 9.2.4 James makes a proposal to Maiko
J: So, (1) I don't know°, like, (2) I don't know°, um, a role 1
play? The situation is at 7PM. 2
M: Un. 3
J: The situation, the time is 7PM. 4
M: Un. 5
J: I'm calling, um, YOU, 6
M: Un° 7
J: Ok, and I have to guess what you are doing at 7PM 8
M: Un° 9
J: and your answer would be what you usually do 10
M: Un° Un° 11
J: at 7PM. 12
M: Un° 13
J: So, you would, say, Hello 14
M: "Hello" 15
J: Oh, hi, Maiko. 16
M: Yes° 17
J: Uh, are you, are you eating dinner? 18
T: Ah, no I'm not. (short laugh) 19
J: Um, are you, um, are you preparing for class? 20
T: Yes, I am. 21
((Abbreviated))
J: The students do a role play 22
M: Un, un, un. 23
J: and the time is 8 O'clock, 24
M: Um, um, um. 25
((Abbreviated))
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J: I think it would be good if the activity had an element of, 26
like, authenticity. 27
M: Unn,° un, un 28
((Abbreviated))
M: Yeah, authenticity, that is what Sato Manabu Sensei always talks 29
about. 30
J: Ok. 31
In Line 1, I muttered “I don’t know” to myself quietly because I had a rough idea in
my head but was not sure it was worth saying. My idea was for students to write schedules
of what they do at certain times of the night and then to be called at various times in a
role play and asked what they were doing. The extract shows some of my explanation and
demonstration of this activity to Maiko. Again, the acknowledgement tokens show that
Maiko is listening attentively. In Line 27, I use the word authenticity to describe the
proposed activity. My hope was that the students’ interaction in the task would be realistic.
This word seemed to register with Maiko as she gave three acknowledgement tokens after
I said it and later related authenticity to Sato’s theory of collaborative learning.
9.2.1.2 CI 6M Interpretation
This CI showed the conceptual puzzles Maiko was facing. The textbook page Maiko
was to teach was not necessarily compatible with the kinds of tasks Maiko was to do for
the open-school conference. This CI shows me trying to act as a TOT to Maiko in a
dialogic manner. In the end, I proposed a jumping task activity which tried to incorporate
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the goals she had for the students and Sato’s theory. Maiko was receptive to my very
rough idea for her jumping task and tried to incorporate it.
This CI was my attempt at dialogic talk (Copland & Mann, 2010), but in the end it
was unsuccessful. Maiko originally wanted me to give feedback on her idea of students
writing and then performing a dialogue for the jumping task, and I had led her to try
something completely different. To make this a truly collaborative endeavor, I would
have explored with Maiko how we could make her idea of performing skits in the jumping
task correspond with both her pedagogical goals and Sato’s theory.
Upon reflection, I realized that I almost always use brainstorming in order to come
up with ideas for tasks, and I nearly always recommend to teachers that they add
spontaneous communication into their classes. Maiko’s original idea was for students to
make a skit as a jumping task, but I changed it to a task with spontaneous communication.
9.2.2 CI 7M Practice, TOT: Maiko’s philosophy and style versus James’ failed idea
(November 11, 2014)
On November 11, over 500 people descended upon Shirakawa JHS. The format for
the day’s conference was two classes in the morning for each subject, an all-school
meeting featuring a student choral performance, a break for lunch, a presentation about
the school’s research theme, a lecture by a university professor about the research theme,
collaborative learning, and lastly ‘research meetings’ for each subject. As an ‘advisor,’
my role was to give a 5-minute talk at the end of the research meeting. The unique
characteristic of this conference was that the day’s program gave all participants some
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themes to focus on for their observation. For all lessons across subjects, there was a
common goal and a jumping task. Each lesson was supposed to serve as a ‘stage for
learning’ (gakushuu no dodai), and the learning in class would be the product of the
collaborative work of the students.
From this CI, I learned two things. First, I was able to see how Maiko’s philosophy
of practice had solidified. Second, I realized why my idea was destined to fail.
9.2.2.1 CI 7M Event
When Maiko’s class began, I counted approximately 43 observers crowded into a
room of 39 students and one teacher. An information gap activity such as I had
recommended was put into the lesson plan for the jumping task and included in the
worksheet that students were given that day. However, Maiko elected not to do it at the
last second.
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In this lesson, students quickly finished the PPP textbook page, which constituted
the common goal, and then did the jumping task, which was Maiko’s original activity.
The common goal of this lesson was to “master expressions for asking and answering
what one is doing” and the goal of the jumping task was to “ask what a friend is doing.”
The worksheet in Figure 9.2.1 shows the procedures for the jumping task. The first
activity was my idea from the previous month. The second activity was the idea Maiko
had discussed. Maiko had attempted to incorporate both our ideas into the lesson but in
the end, she only used her idea.
Figure 9.2.1 Maiko’s worksheet for the jumping task.
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After the class, I realized that the participants in the open-school conference had
observed what I had been witnessing for a year: Maiko giving a challenging task to the
students and most of them trying to complete it. This was the objective of Shirakawa’s
cooperative learning, which Maiko was successfully carrying out. Previously, Maiko had
asked me for an idea, but the best strategy for the open-school conference was for her to
teach as she normally did. Maiko had her own, proven effective teaching routines that
were supported by Shirakwa JHS’s school-wide curriculum.
9.2.2.2 CI 7R Interpretation
Overall, the open-class conference gave me an understanding of Maiko’s practice
and its rationale, and this in turn helped me recognize why my idea failed and how I could
be a better TOT. This all became apparent to me in the interviews I had with Maiko after
the conference. In the extract below, Maiko was recounting the ‘research meeting’
(bunkakai) attended by the teachers who had observed the class, which was held after her
lesson. In our interview, I asked Maiko what was omoshiroi (interesting) about the
discussion in the research meeting. To Maiko, it was how the teachers interpreted her
actions in the open class.
.
Extract 9.2.5 Discussing other teachers’ interpretations of her actions
M: And in that class I was not really helping the students just let 1
them to do the activity. In [Sato]'s theory we teachers do just 2
listen and, you know, tsunagu [=connect]. 3
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J: Right 4
M: That's our stance. 5
J: Listen and tsunagu, connect. 6
M: Connect the students' ideas. 7
J: Ah, ok. 8
M: So maybe other teachers thought I am doing nothing for the 9
students to support them. That was also omoshiroi 10
[=interesting]. 11
J: Ah, naruhodo [=I see]12
Tsunagu, meaning ‘connect,’ was a keyword used in Shirakawa JHS’s research. In
Line 7, Maiko discussed what it meant to her. During the open class, Maiko let the
students struggle and try to work out their points of confusion by themselves before
assisting them so that they would be able to “connect their ideas.” She believed that other
teachers watching the class, however, interpreted her actions to mean that she was
neglecting to support the students (Line 9 – 10). Other teachers also misinterpreted the
reason for Maiko’s not saying the goal of the lesson at the beginning and not summarizing
the lesson at the end.
Extract 9.2.6 Another misinterpretation
M: One teacher said, uh, setting the goal is kind of awkward for 1
her. 2
((Abbreviated))
M: When I go to [teacher training seminars], most of the [teacher’s 3
counselors] tell us that is we set the goal before the class↑ 4
J: Yeah. 5
M: And at the end of the class the students should know what they 6
learned and what they studied but since we are working on Sato's 7
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research we cannot do it one class but we still think about the 8
[lesson], the [chapter] then at the end of the [chapter] they are 9
supposed to achieve the goal but the other teachers think they 10
should have in the class like summary and things and I could not 11
do it during the class and maybe some teachers thought it was not 12
a good class because the summary was not at the end. 13
J: Oh really. If you spoke to them one-to-one what would you say to 14
them? 15
M: At the end of the [chapter], yes we have that kind of summary. At 16
the end of the [chapter], the students summarize the, what they've 17
learned. If we put the jumping task in that class it is really 18
hard to make them summarize in that class.19
Here, Maiko said that not introducing the goal at the beginning of the class and not
summarizing what was learned at the end of the class went against the standard
convention most teachers in the prefecture are instructed to follow. Lines 6 to 13 show
that as a second-year teacher, Maiko was willing to go against this standard sequencing
of teaching procedures in order to accommodate the jumping task. This was something
other teachers would struggle to understand. Below, I tried to play the devil’s advocate to
elicit more from Maiko about the value of the jumping task:
Extract 9.2.7 Defending the jumping task
J: How do you do like prove, how do you show the jumping task is 1
working or how do you show what the students have learned 2
from it or- 3
M: I think that Ota Sensei proved from the result of the exam. 4
So many students, usually the students who doesn't have any 5
knowledge of the grammar. They don't really write. We call it 6
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the B problems. Something like writing, writing some essays. 7
But they started working on those questions. 8
((Abbreviated))
J: Yeah 9
M: So the students' average points. 10
J: Because they started working on the B Problems. What is the B 11
Problem? 12
M: They need not only the knowledge but also they have to think 13
about, in English, they have to think about their own 14
opinions and they have to write about it. And in the other 15
subject, I heard that they have to think how to, they have to 16
think about how to solve. That is B Problem. 17
J: OK 18
M: A Problem is just answer and check their knowledge. 19
J: OK, B Problem is application so in English write their 20
opinions. And Shirakawa JHS students have done better at the 21
B Problems. OK, there was like a pre-test post-test type 22
thing? 23
M: Yes 24
J: OK, how does a jumping task relate to doing a B [Problem]? 25
M: Ummm. 26
J: Like what kind of activities do they do in the jumping task 27
that get them to think? 28
M: Ummm, they have to think in pairs and in groups and the 29
students who do not know how to do it. And they are helped by 30
the students that already know and those students have the 31
courage to challenge these questions. 32
In Lines 3 to 7, after I ask how they have proven the effectiveness of the jumping
task, Maiko is quick to interject and says that weaker students are now able to write B
Problems. In Lines 11 to 12, I ask her what a B Problem is and by the end of the
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conversation I have come to the understanding that what the students are doing in the
jumping task is a B Problem. In other words, in every lesson, the textbook content can be
considered the bare minimum and the jumping task is the application of this knowledge
that requires deeper thinking from the student. The preceding extracts show that Maiko
had teaching principles that she could rationalize, actualize in front of others, and defend
against others. According to Borg (2006), part of teacher development involves
developing ideas, concepts, or theories based on one’s experiences. Maiko had
accomplished this.
With this specific teacher, Maiko, with her specific principles described above,
teaching in her specific circumstances, I proposed an activity for the open-class based on
the premise that authentic, spontaneous communication was a necessary component of
the communicative class. Below, Maiko told me why she thought my activity would not
work.
Extract 9.2.8 Why James’ activity would not work
M: One reason is that they have not done, they haven't done that 1
kind of information gap activities a lot in the past so they 2
do not know how to that. And another reason is, maybe, they 3
can't talk long for one person. They just end up a 4
conversation very short. Maybe they can't talk every 5
students in the class. 6
J: They can't talk... 7
M: They talk a particular person like their friends, their 8
really close friends. Like boys talk to boys and girls talk 9
to girls. 10
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J: Ah, ok, like talking. Sometimes boys talking to girls can be 11
problematic and then. Ok, OK. OK oooh. OK. OK, I see, I see, 12
um, I guess, you know, there are different degrees of 13
communication in a, so you can have a controlled activity, I 14
guess you would call this a controlled communicative 15
activity where the words are... then freer communication 16
where students have some, have some degree of freedom with 17
the language that they can use and then you have free where 18
students have complete freedom. Personally, I am kind of 19
interested in, ok, how can we get JHS students to go from 20
freer to free or more spontaneous. But then I wonder, you 21
know, I see your class and I think your class is a very good 22
class and the students are all working hard and the students 23
are all learning and I am wondering maybe first year, JHS, 24
you can get to freer but you can't get any higher than 25
freer. What do you think? 26
M: Ummm, uhmm, I don't think I can get free. We, I give some 27
topics or I set some situations and they can talk 28
spontaneously but if it is just free and talk then they 29
can't. 30
In Lines 1 to 6 and 8 to 10, Maiko gave the following reasons: 1) Students are not
used to information gap activities; 2) Students cannot speak to another person for a long
time; 3) Students cannot talk to other students in the class because boys and girls will not
initiate conversations with one another. In Lines11 to 20, I attempted to rationalize my
idea. I explained to her how activities can range from controlled to freer to free in terms
of the degree of freedom learners have in choosing their own language, and I am
interested in helping JHS learn to do more spontaneous kinds of communication.
However, in Lines 21 to 26, I acknowledge how good Maiko’s class is and wonder if
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perhaps free communication among students is unnecessary for her class. In Lines 27 to
30, Maiko says that she cannot do free, but that she “can give some topics and set some
situations they can talk spontaneously,” which is exactly what I meant by a “free activity.”
It is what I imagined the students doing in the activity I recommended to Maiko. However,
Maiko evidently thought that the activity I proposed lacked both a situation and a topic
and thus was not feasible. Unfortunately, I did not pick up on this until I had transcribed
the interview.
Why did Maiko reject my activity, if, in principle, she said she could conduct it? The
likely reason was that from the beginning, I had proposed an idea without sufficient
situational understanding. According to Kumaravadivelu (2012), if pedagogical
knowledge is to have local relevance, it must emerge from the practice of every day
teaching. In other words, I had given unsolicited advice focusing on spontaneity. For
Maiko, however, the purpose of the jumping task was for students to discuss and connect
their ideas by, for example, composing a dialogue together. When composing a dialogue,
students can discuss the situation and appropriate language to use in the situation and thus
teach each other. To Maiko, an information gap activity was not only logistically difficult,
it also did not encourage students to think at such a profound level as the dialogue
composition would have.
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9.2.3 CI 8R: Practice: Recognizing Maiko’s teaching achievement in a performance
test
March 16, 2015 was the last class of my study. The event was critical in that I
witnessed what I believed to be the type of student performance that the English
curriculum of the Sunshine textbook could accomplish under all the right conditions: a
good teacher, motivated students, and an above-average school.
9.2.3.1 CI 8R Event
The students were taking a speaking test based on My Project 3 in the textbook
(Kairyudo, 2011a). In the test, students had to interview a friend using all the
interrogatives they had studied. During class, students went into the hall outside the room
in pairs. One partner was the interviewer for 50 seconds. Maiko would hold up a flashcard
with a key word and the interviewer would ask the interviewee a question. When time
expired, partners would change roles. Students were evaluated on whether they could ask
the questions. Extract 9.2.9 below shows Maiko giving the speaking test to Satoru and
Miha. Maiko was sitting at a desk showing cards and Miha was asking questions based
on the keywords. As the doors were open to all the classrooms, students could hear the
test-takers if they spoke loudly.
Extract 9.2.9 Miha interviews Satoru
Miha: ((Maiko shows the card 名前[=name])) What's your name? 1
Satoru: My name is Satoru Kameta 2
Miha: ((Maiko shows the card 職業 [= occupation])) What's your 3
job? 4
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Satoru: I'm student 5
Miha: ((Maiko shows the card 身長 [= height])) How tall are you? 6
Satoru: I'm 150 centimeters tall. 7
Miha: ((Maiko shows the card好物 [= favorite food])) What's 8
your, what's your favorite food? 9
Satoru: I like sushi. 10
Miha: ((Maiko shows the card出身 [= birthplace])) What's your 11
from. Chigau [=that’s wrong]. How are you from? 12
((Clapping hands to help herself recall)) 13
((Maiko is quietly laughing and changes the card to 住所 14
[=address])) 15
Miha: Chigau, chigau, sumimasen [=That’s wrong, that’s wrong, 16
sorry] Where do you live? 17
Satoru: I live in Morioka 18
Miha: ((Maiko shows the card年齢 [= age])) Where are you from? 19
((Maiko changes the card back to出身[=birthplace])) 20
Satoru: I'm from Morioka. 21
Miha: ((Maiko shows the card年齢 [= age] again)) How old are 22
you? 23
Satoru: I'm 13. 24
Miha: ((Maiko shows the card家族 [= family])) What's you, what's 25
your, YABAI, YABAI [= This is bad! This is bad!] 26
((Student laughter can be heard from another classroom)) 27
Maiko: Shhh, Shhh ((With a little laughter)) 28
Miha: WHAT'S YOUR, WHAT'S YOUR, WHAT'S YOUR! ((xxx) YABAI NO↑29
[=This is really bad!] ((Loud laughter can be heard from 30
another classroom)) Kikoeteiruno? [=Can they hear me?] 31
Maiko: ((laughing)) Kikoeteiru [=They can hear.] 32
Miha: ((The time is finished. Maiko shows the 家族 [=family] card 33
again)) Wakarundesuyo. [= I really know]. How, how many 34
brothers, how many brothers do you have? Kuso! Kuso! [= 35
Crap! Crap!]/ 36
Satoru: /Demo purasu arufa wo site morau [= The teacher will give 37
267
you some extra points]/ 38
Maiko: /Demo daijoubu [= But, it’s ok.]/ daijoubu desu .[ =It’s 39
ok.]40
9.2.3.2 CI 8R Interpretation
After the speaking test, Maiko and I talked about the different students who took the
test. Miha had performed better than average and Satoru had performed perfectly. I
learned about the priorities and characteristics of the different students in her class.
Some of the key phrases Maiko used to describe students were hard worker, lazy, good,
active, a club enthusiast, learning challenged, disliking English, a good teacher to others,
greatly improved, a perfectionist, a multi-tasker, an aspiring carpenter, and not being
able to grasp the content. Maiko had succeeded in getting all these different students to
pass the oral performance test, asking and answering basic but useful personal questions.
This was no small feat, as explained below.
It is common to hear claims that Japanese English education is not communicative
and Japanese learners do not speak English. However, according to the US foreign service
(Effective Language Learning, 2014), it takes approximately 2,200 classroom hours for
a native English speaker to develop full professional proficiency in Japanese, which they
define as being “able to use the language fluently and accurately on all levels pertinent to
professional needs” (US Department of State, 2016). For Japanese, likewise, learning
English is a long endeavor. Furthermore, the number 2,200 refers to cognitively mature
learners with a high motivation to master the second language. In contrast, JHS, students
spend approximately 116 hours a year in the classroom studying English (50 minutes X
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140 periods) for a total of 350 hours in the classroom (MEXT, n.d-b). They are also taking
a full load of other courses and have intensive club activities. Learning gains made in
English by students at even the best JHSs will be very modest after one year. Maiko
showed what was possible given these constraints. She consistently provided well-
designed lessons which provided opportunities for deep learning while students
consistently worked hard in each class and had opportunities to practice English in a range
of oral and written contexts. Their learning was evidenced in the oral performance, as
was their seeming engagement with the task of leaning English.
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10. An Analysis of the Puzzles, Practice and TOT Relationship
This chapter has two purposes. The first is to use Cultural Historical Activity Theory
(CHAT) to rationalize the puzzles and practices of the teachers. The reason why both
puzzles and practices are presented together is that the teachers’ practices tended to be a
result of how they reacted to their puzzles. The three teachers in this study demonstrated
varying degrees of success in conducting a form CLT. A CHAT analysis of each teacher
can explain the nature of puzzles novice English teachers in so called ‘expanding circle’
countries might face when engaging in CLT and rationalize the type of pedagogical
practice they might adopt under their different circumstances. This section does not seek
to challenge previous research in teacher development but rather contribute to the
understanding of the complex process of learning to teach English in a Japanese junior
high school. Helping to make sense of complex phenomenon is one of the benefits of
qualitative research (Dörnyei, 2007).
The second purpose is to compare the TOT relationship between each teacher and
me and to discuss the implications of these findings for supporting teachers. To my
knowledge, there are few studies in English describing the nature of feedback between a
TOT from an ‘inner circle’ country and a teacher from an ‘expanding circle’ country (An
exception is Gu, 2007).
10.1 A CHAT Analysis of the Teachers’ Puzzles and Practices
The supposition of this research was that teachers would develop through identifying
and resolving puzzles in their teaching, which would in turn transform them and their
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social contexts. According to Yamagata-Lynch (2010), CHAT can be used to map the co-
evolutionary interaction between individuals and the environment, and the effect of each
on the other. In this section, I use CHAT to show what kind of puzzles teachers
experienced and the types of pedagogical practices they adopted in attempting to teach
CLT. According to Engeström’s (1999a) concept of learning in activity systems
(represented by the triangle diagrams in Section 2.4 and the Prologue to Chapters 3 and
4) development may be seen as resolving contradictions between the different elements
of the system. Resolving these contradictions involves the transformation of the
conflicting elements. For example, if a teacher cannot conduct a communicative activity
because of rambunctious students, the problem could originate in, for example, the nature
of the activity, the students, and/or the preferred pedagogical techniques of the teacher or
educational culture. Identifying and modifying these elements will not only improve the
quality of teaching and learning but also facilitate teacher development.
Before I use CHAT to discuss each teacher’s puzzles and practices, it is necessary
to explain how I matched different areas of the CHAT diagram to different parts of the
teachers’ social contexts. This will help illuminate the common elements of all the
teachers’ social contexts, as well as common puzzles they would be likely to experience.
The common elements of each teacher’s activity system are shown in Figure 10.1.1 below.
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As discussed in Section 3.4, the object or motive of the activity was the same for
all teachers: teaching a form of CLT. The tools were either material or symbolic artifacts
the teachers used to carry out their object-oriented actions. The tools that the teachers
shared were the Sunshine Textbook, Fujita Sensei, and me. The textbook determined the
content that they would teach as well as provided the activities the teachers would use to
teach their version of CLT. Fujita Sensei, in the first year, provided advice to the teachers,
occasionally team taught with them, and provided them with ideas for teaching or her
own worksheets. In fact, I observed Risa in CI 5R and Yuta in CI 4Y teach the same
writing class based on Fujita Sensei’s recommended framework. I was an occasional
helper whom the teachers could utilize if they desired.
Figure 10.1.1 The teachers’ shared activity system
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Rules/norms are the rules teachers must follow or the norms of behavior they must
adhere to. The Course of Study acted as rules because schools were required by law to
follow it, and in theory teachers were bound by law to accomplish its objectives, which
were related to a CLT-like approach. The Course of Study could also be interpreted as a
tool because teachers used its objectives as criteria for evaluation (Maiko discussed this
in CI 1M). Norms were that the teachers were expected to teach their subject, manage
student participation effectively, develop student character, and improve their own
teaching as novice teachers.
Community can be thought of as other actors who play a role in the object-oriented
action of the subject. The community shared by the teachers consisted of: Fujita Sensei,
the BOE, and me. I have already discussed how Fujita Sensei acted as a tool as well as
how the BOE was active with the teachers’ professional development in the first year. To
the teachers, as far as I could tell, I was an L1 English speaking university professor who
visited them monthly and observed and spoke with them about their classes. The CIs
show that I played multiple roles; that of an observer or participant in the classes and that
of an involved advisor or curious researcher in the interviews.
Division of labor describes a teacher’s duties. It differs from rules/norms in that it
describes what the teachers actually do. All the teachers were officially engaged in
professional development in their first years. That is, they were assigned Fujita Sensei as
a mentor, and the BOE monitored their teaching, giving them projects to encourage them
to learn their craft.
The term ‘Guidance’ ( under division of labor indicates teachers’ supervisory duties,
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which include homeroom, teaching English to a specific grade, advising a club, and
advising a committee. I put the teachers’ English teaching responsibilities together with
their other work duties to emphasize the expectations the Japanese education system
places in its teachers discussed in Section 3.3: teachers should devote themselves
completely to understanding their profession, which entails being involved in all aspects
of school life.
In the following sub-sections, I use contradictions in the teachers’ activity systems
to explain the nature of the teachers’ puzzles, or in the case of Yuta, problems. There
were three kinds of contradictions: primary, secondary, and tertiary. A primary
contradiction is a conflict within one element of the system. In Figure 10.1.1 the primary
contradiction is marked with a dotted blue circle. In this case, the teachers’ duty of self-
development is at odds with their other duties, homeroom and guidance, because a full
workload will take away time for professional development activities. A secondary
contradiction is between two different elements in an activity system. Figure 10.1.1 shows
that the division of labor can be at odds with the object of teaching CLT if teachers are
too busy to develop. This is marked with a red dotted line. Tertiary contradiction occurs
between activity systems. A much-discussed contradiction is between students’ desire to
score well on entrance exams and CLT in English education policy (Sakui, 2004;
Underwood, 2012). Students’ enthusiasm for entrance exam preparation was seen in
Yuta’s class in CI 3Y. In Figure 10.1.1, a tertiary contradiction between the object of the
students’ activity systems and that of the teachers’ activity system is marked with a purple
dotted line.
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10.1.1 Analysis of Risa: Exercising agency under contextual limitations
In this section, I introduce Risa’s activity system and use the contradictions in it to
describe her puzzles. I then discuss how her practice developed in these particular
circumstances. The analysis shows Risa as a teacher who exercised her agency under
contextual limitations. Agency was discussed in Section 4.1 as something that teachers
do in a particular circumstance rather than what teachers have (Priestley et al., 2012).
Therefore, the way in which Risa exercised here agency informs us of her current stage
of development as a teacher.
Figure 10.1.2 gives an overview of Risa’s object-oriented action of teaching CLT
over the duration of this study. The outcomes shown are not exhaustive but rather those I
Figure 10.1.2 Overview of Risa’s activity system
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could discern based on the data I had collected. (This will also be the case with the other
teachers.) For Risa, her first outcome was the five principles listed in CI 11R. Risa said
that she must 1. Enjoy class; 2. Continue to learn; 3. Check students’ progress; 4. Talk to
students more; 5. Deepen her understanding of the textbook content.
Risa’s profile is written under subject, because teachers’ rationale for enacting their
agency comes from their past histories (Priestley et al., 2015). Risa was a recent college
graduate who majored in English literature. Her goal was for students to, “feel that
English is interesting or fun” (CI 1R). Risa elaborated that she wanted students to feel
that they want to use English. Risa’s image of CLT seemed to be: enjoy English and
communicate.
Her community, Tamai JHS, seemed to allow more autonomy than Shirakawa and
Aoki JHSs; she was not bound to follow school-wide curricular guidelines nor were her
classes observed with much frequency. Overall, despite Risa’s lack of experience, she
seemed to receive little mentorship and could teach as she wanted.
In Risa’s first year she taught grade 2 and served as a homeroom teacher. At the time,
I was not aware of any particular dynamic between Risa and any homeroom. In the second
year, however, I focused my observations on her instruction of her homeroom, 1C,
because learning to manage this class became one of the most challenging puzzles that
Risa encountered.
The rules in Risa’s classes were the Course of Study, assigned seating (CI 6R, CI
9R), and making sure all students understood everything (CI 6R). In her second year, I
noticed Risa was constantly negotiating rules of proper behavior with 1C (CI 9R), as she
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was searching for the best way to manage their behavior. For this reason, I have written
“negotiated” in her activity system under rules.
For tools, Risa struggled to use the Sunshine textbook in the PPP-style lessons. Any
lesson which involved two or more students using English for practice or communication
was challenging for Risa (CIs 6R, 7R, 8R, 9R). She was able to manage students better
in the reading (CI 2R), writing (CI 5R), and classes involving some kind of memorized
performance such as speech-giving (CI 10R). Charles, the ALT, also served as a social
tool as he assisted in speaking tests, supported students in class, demonstrated dialogues
and pronunciation, and sometimes taught the PPP-style lesson for Risa. I could serve as
a tool for supporting students in Risa’s writing classes (CI4R, CI5R).
Overall, the activity system shows Risa as a subject who started teaching with
minimal experience. Her outcome after two years was the development of her own
principles for teaching and a bond with the students. The next section examines the
puzzles which impacted this development.
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10.1.1.1 Analysis of Risa’s puzzles
This section discusses two of the primary puzzles I identified for Risa in this study.
The first was transitioning from her first to second year; this puzzle relates to how the
subject had to adapt to a new environment. The second was teaching the PPP style lessons
and the interaction between the subject, tools, community, and norms/rules.
The issues elicited from Risa which I coded as puzzles are shown in Table 10.1.1. It
is my belief that Risa’s puzzles changed as her circumstances in the first and second year
changed. The table separates Risa’s first and second year’s teaching with a wavy line.
From October, 2013 to March, 2014, Risa was teaching the second grade. The prominent
Table 10.1.1. Risa’s pedagogical puzzles
Puzzle Student Teaching
Date of
Interview Ability
Behavior/
Readiness
Effort/
Motivation Gender
Area
/Skill
Discipline/
Management Pace
２０１３
Oct 25 〇 〇
CI 1R 〇
Nov 25 〇
Dec 17 〇 〇 〇
Jan 27 〇 CI 5R 〇
CI 5R
1C
↓
Apr 18 〇 〇 〇 〇
May 9 〇
CI 6R 〇 〇
CI 6R
２０１４
Jun 30 〇 〇 〇
Jul 18 〇 〇 CI 7R 〇 〇 CI 7
Sep 26 〇 CI 8R
Oct 17 〇
Nov 18 〇 〇 〇
２０１５
Jan 16 〇 〇
Feb 13 〇 〇 〇
CI 10R
Mar 6 〇 〇
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puzzles were under area/skill category, how to teach and practice grammar as well as
how to teach writing, and effort/motivation, or how to encourage under-motivated
students. From April, Risa became a homeroom teacher for 1C and the nature of her
puzzles changed from how to teach particular skills to how to respond to students who
would not behave or needed to be taught how to learn (behavior/readiness). The puzzles
about how to teach certain skills still existed but her attention shifted to how to respond
to 1C’s behavior.
Figure 10.1.3 uses two CHAT charts showing Risa’s first and second year. It
becomes apparent that they represent two separate activity systems. Any part of an
element which was different in Years 1 and 2 is underlined. Those elements which
contradict are connected by a purple dotted line which represents tertiary contradictions.
The contradicting elements also signified a need for adjustment on the part of Risa. In the
first year, one outcome of Risa’s teaching CLT with me as an observer was that most of
the puzzles we discussed were related to teaching or student motivation. In her second
Figure 10.1.3 Risa’s activity systems in year 1 and year 2
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year, however, the outcome was discussing puzzles concerning student behavior in every
interview.
In year 1, it is evident that Risa had a broader community. She was working together
with Fujita Sensei and Charles and was also under the supervision of the BOE. In her
second year, Fujita Sensei was not visiting her and Charles transferred after 3 months.
Fujita Sensei and Charles were both members of her community and useful tools which
Risa could no longer utilize. Also, her BOE seminars were less frequent. There was a
substantial difference in the types of students too. In the first year, her students were in
grade 2 and had one year of experience learning JHS English. They understood the
classroom routines that were expected of them such as pair work. By contrast, for Grade
1, Risa’s task was not just to teach the students English, but to teach them the classroom
routines necessary for English learning and for her to successfully teach CLT. Thus, in
Year 2 there was a secondary contradiction between 1C’s readiness to engage in
communicative activities (community) with each other and Risa’s ability to provide this
guidance (division of labor).
In her second year, Risa used some tools given to her by Maiko such as a vocabulary
sheet. She also started to use a jumping task which she learned from a BOE seminar.
However, she had no one to talk to about how she was using these tools except for me.
Another difference in tools was the type of activities in the first and second grade
Sunshine textbook. In the second grade, the textbook had more reading texts and writing
activities, and students tended to be more on-task in these types of lessons. The first grade
had more PPP-type lessons. These lessons involved the teaching of grammar, which Risa
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acknowledged as a weakness in her teaching. It also involved pair work, which was
difficult for her to coordinate.
In the first year, Risa’s rules were Fujita Sensei’s advice as to how to teach the class.
For example, Fujita Sensei advised Risa on how to have the students hold their textbooks
and how to place students into groups. She also pushed Risa to finish textbook chapters
in a timely manner. Without someone to provide her with advice on pace as well as
student management, it seemed that Risa’s pace was inconsistent and her rules became
less certain as she often chose to negotiate them.
In the Division of Labor, the biggest difference was that as a first-year teacher it was
Risa’s duty to learn and improve, but as a second-year teacher she had no mentor and
much less guidance from the BOE. In both years she was very busy with all her duties
(class, homeroom, clubs, and committees), making it unlikely that she could devote much
time to professional development.
Overall, the CHAT diagrams presented in Figure 10.1.3 show that, in her second year,
Risa lost some helpful tools, had a smaller community of support, had the bigger
challenge of teaching students how to study English in JHS, and had to teach different
kinds of textbook material. She also had fewer opportunities for professional
development. Risa’s experience suggests that novice teachers in their first year are
learning to teach under a specific set of environmental conditions, and if these conditions
change in their second year they are novices again. This supports Well’s (2002) CHAT
tenet that activities are uniquely situated in space and time, discussed in Section 2.4.
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Because the majority of Risa’s challenging classroom experiences I observed
occurred in the PPP-style lessons during the second year of the study, I will use CHAT
to examine the activity of teaching such a lesson. Figure 10.1.4 shows the activity of a
PPP lesson in Risa’s circumstance with all the contradictions numbered. The object is for
students to communicate in let’s try, the final communicative activity of a PPP lesson.
The subject was Risa and the community consisted of the boys and girls of 1C who were
of various levels of ability in English. Rules/norms of the lesson were that students were
expected to follow the teacher’s instructions in order to learn how to “do English language
learning in JHS.” They also had to speak when asked and communicate with their partners.
Figure 10.1.4 The activity of teaching a PPP class
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There was a secondary contradiction between the rules and the division of labor
(number 1 in Figure 10.1.4). The boys were engaged in “hyper-participation” (Rampton,
2006), withdrawal, or normal participation, while the girls were mostly engaged in either
silent-participation or withdrawal. Risa, in one lesson, would try to manage the boys,
teach slowly for the students who did not understand, and also work individually with
students who could or would not do the activities. This division of labor became a primary
contradiction (number 2). Risa could not respond to each type of student and teach the
class in an engaging and efficient way. In addition, the division of labor was not
conducive to attaining the object, completing let’s try (number 3), as time nearly always
ran out. This was another secondary contradiction.
In the PPP activity, a further secondary contradiction was between the subject, Risa,
who wanted students to enjoy communication, and the tool, the Sunshine textbook
(number 4). As CI 6R and CI 8R show, the Sunshine PPP lessons were easy and perhaps
uninteresting for some of the students, who tended to be disorderly. I did not observe Risa
add any supplementary activities or variations to make the class more engaging. This
became another secondary contradiction; the tool was not appropriate for the community
(number 5).
The final primary contradiction is the subject herself (number 6). Risa wanted
students to enjoy communicating in English but did not seem to know concrete ways to
actualize this ideal. It seemed that her personal pedagogical theory was not developed.
Section 3.1 presented the stories of Rie (Hall, 2014b) and Ryouhei (Takahashi, 2014),
who had their own concrete concepts of how to conduct communicative activities and
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what students should achieve from them. In Risa’s case, however, as discussed in CI 6R
and CI 8R, it was hard to see what her motive was for doing the PPP-style lessons.
Finally, there was a tertiary contradiction between the object of Risa’s PPP lesson
and that of the more disruptive boys, Ikeno-kun, Takeshi, and Koki (number 7). In an
interview on October 17, 2014, Risa gave the following reason for these boys’
uncooperative behavior after a difficult PPP-type lesson.
Extract 10.1.1 Risa on why the 1C boys are not cooperative
R: Because, because, if they won't listen to me like today or 1
these day's class, if they won't listen to me but they could 2
get not bad grades or scores on the test so, so they think. I 3
think they think that they don't need to listen to, listen to 4
the class. 5
Here, Risa elucidates the contradiction between the object of the PPP-class activity
and the boys’ English class activity. In the PPP lesson, the rules in Figure 10.1.4 show
that students were expected to communicate with one another, but there was no clear
evaluation. Therefore, these boys had no reason to participate in the PPP lesson.
One of the primary puzzles Risa faced is that the PPP lessons didn’t work as they
should. This section has shown seven contradictions involving all the elements along the
CHAT triangle. Risa’s grappling with the PPP lessons shows that resolving a pedagogical
puzzle is more than just changing a technique; it calls for transforming the context. The
complexity of the puzzle of this specific teacher, Risa, teaching this specific type of lesson,
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PPP, to this specific group of students, 1C, shows why the puzzle remained unresolved
for the whole year.
10.1.1.2 Analysis of Risa’s Developing Practice
The contradictions in the previous section describe Risa’s contextual limitations.
Within these limitations, Risa was continuously enacting her agency, and as a result she
did exhibit what one could consider development in her practice. In this section, I discuss
how Risa and her students might have benefited from her exercising her agency, the kind
of English teaching and learning Risa and her students seemed amenable to, and the
means by which I saw Risa develop her practice.
Although the puzzle ‘how to manage 1C’ remained unresolved, there was a positive
outcome from Risa’s attempting to understand the situation with her homeroom. Risa and
I spoke frequently about issues with 1C. We spoke not only about the students but also
the measures she had taken to improve 1C’s class participation and behavior. Table 10.1.2
Table 10.1.2 Measures Risa took to improve 1C participation
1. Risa provides engaging topics (May 9,
2014)
2. Risa reminds students of good behavior
(May 9)
3. Risa changes seating assignments (May 9)
4. Risa gives lower-level students confidence
(May 9)
5. Students help each other (June 30)
6. Risa changes student seating (Sep 26)
7. Students participate in choral competition
(Sep 26)
8. Risa stops talking (Sep 26)
9. Risa talks to each student (Sep 26)
10. Student leaders intervene (Nov 18)
11. Risa has idea to have girls speak louder
(Dec 12)
12. Risa gets girls to intervene (Dec 12)
13. Risa changes student seating (Jan 16,
2015)
14. Risa makes the class more interesting
(Jan 16)
15. Risa gets boys and girls to talk (Mar 6)
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shows the measures Risa took. The date refers to the interview in which Risa discussed
the measure.
These measures show that although 1C remained challenging throughout the
academic year (April, 2014 – March, 2015), Risa was able to exercise her agency
(Priestley et. al, 2015) to make changes to how she delivered the class. Table 10.1.2,
shows that Risa continued to generate new ways to improve the behavior of 1C while
taking into account her past efforts. She used what was available in the social context: her
own techniques such as making the content more interesting, homeroom rules such as
seating, homeroom events such as the choral competition, and the leadership or
intervention of other students.
Risa’s short-term objective was to improve classroom behavior but she also had a
longer-term objective for 1C. This objective was revealed to me when I asked her what
the goal of homeroom 1C was in an interview we had on October 17, 2014 (It should be
noted that in Japanese JHSs, homerooms often make class goals which act as their
mottos.).
Extract 10.1.2 Risa’s class goal
J: What is 1C's mokuhyou [=objective]? 1
S: Ah, 1C’s gakyuu mokuhyou [=class objective] is kizuna [=bond]. 2
J: Kizuna? 3
S: Yes. Tasukeai [= Help each other]. 4
J: Okay, Tasukeai. 5
S: Yes, help each other. 6
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The measures from Table 10.1.2 and the above extract show that Risa was trying to
build a unified homeroom. It is likely that Risa’s continuous efforts to improve 1C helped
her understand the students better and helped her develop a relationship; indeed she told
me she wanted to continue to teach them the following year. Although there were no
clear-cut resolutions to Risa’s most complicated puzzles, Risa’s exercising of her agency
helped her build a relationship between the subject and community. To me, this was
evident in Risa’s desire to continue to teach the same students the next year, her desire to
discuss the students each time we met, and her persistence in exercising her agency.
Furthermore, 1C showed that they could function as a cohesive group under the right
conditions (CI 10R).
In addition to developing a stronger relationship with students, Risa also had certain
lesson types she could conduct successfully. Evaluated performance such as giving
speeches (CI 10R) as well as deciphering the meaning of texts (CI 2R) seemed to attract
students’ effort and interest.
In Section 3.4, I argued that investigations into English teachers’ instruction should
focus on the nature of teachers’ practices and the reasons behind them rather than the
extent to which the practices are communicative. Risa’s experience shows that
memorization followed by performance can be an effective and engaging means of
learning, and research on cognition in language learning indicates that practice is a
necessary component of foreign language pedagogy (Arnold & Dörnyei, 2015; Dornyei,
2013). Overall, Risa engaged in a weak form of CLT (Littlewood, 2011) in which students
could express themselves in a monologic way through giving speeches and writing. The
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activity system analysis shows that the boys Risa taught in her second year as a teacher
were disruptive and not accustomed to classroom English learning routines. Risa also did
not have as much support in her second year. This made it difficult for her to let go of the
reins and allow pair or group work.
Having summarized Risa’s practice, I turn now to how it evolved. In the second year,
I mostly observed Risa teach her most problematic class, 1C, and do her most challenging
type of lesson, PPP. Therefore, I might have missed Risa trying innovations in other types
of lessons with other classes. The way that Risa attempted to improve her practice was
similar to the craft model of teaching described in Section 4.2.1 (Shimahara, 1998). In
this model, a teacher’s craft is derived from a shared repertoire of practice of colleagues
rather than from research or contact with academics. This was evident in the types of tools
Risa used in classes. At the beginning of the study, Risa adopted many of Fusako Sensei’s
ideas (such as a framework for conducting a writing class and Q & A handouts for warm-
up) and ideas from Charles that she had requested. In the second year, she adopted
Maiko’s vocabulary sheet for word learning, the use of flashcards after her colleagues
recommended their use with Maiko’s word sheet, and the jumping task which she learned
from the BOE at a professional development seminar. She used the jumping task as a
means to keep students who finished an activity early busy (which was different from the
way Maiko used it). I realized that the tools Risa adopted were tried and tested by a
teacher she likely respected (Fujita Sensei or Maiko), provided to her at her request
(Charles), recommended by other teachers and feasible to implement (flashcards), or
suitable for a specific problem in her class such as mixed-level students (jumping task).
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Overall, Risa would adopt tools to enhance her current practice but did not adopt tools
that would fundamentally change the way she taught a specific type of lesson, such as my
recommendations for changing reading aloud in CI 3R.
In the terminology of Edge’s (2011) dimensions of becoming, Risa demonstrated
that she could be ‘theoretical,’ or articulate what was happening in her teaching and why.
As Risa was newer to teaching than the other teachers in this study, it is possible that in
subsequent years, she will start to show signs of being ‘intellectual,’ relating TESOL to
the wider world, and ‘pragmatic,’ able to conduct informed action with a future
orientation.
Overall, the contradictions in the CHAT analysis show that in her second year, in
particular, Risa faced some perplexing puzzles. Although she was left to her own devices,
Risa exercised her agency to resolve these puzzles. The CHAT analysis, showed that Risa
was willing to take advice from members of her community and incorporate their tools.
This willingness of Risa’s demonstrates the potential of teacher collaboration, which
scholars in the field of teacher education deem to be essential for in-service development
(Mann & Walsh, 2013). Therefore, one can surmise that Risa might have benefited from
working more with members of her community to address her most challenging puzzles,
such as how to manage 1C.
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10.1.2 Analysis of Maiko: Resolving puzzles with a support system
In this section, I will first discuss Maiko’s activity system. After that I will summarize
her puzzles. Lastly, using a CHAT diagram, I will discuss how Maiko developed from
addressing the puzzles. Maiko was a teacher with experience with an extended community
consisting of outside experts and senior teachers at school to support her, which served
as a community of practice(Wenger, 1998). This was one primary difference between
Maiko and the other teachers. A CHAT analysis shows how Maiko interacted with the
social context to produce a favorable outcome.
Figure 10.1.5 shows the activity of Maiko teaching CLT as I observed it over the
span of the study. The primary outcome I could discern from this activity came from the
Figure 10.1.5 Maiko’s activity of teaching CLT
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student speaking test of 1B described in CI I 8R. At the ending of 18 months of
observation, Maiko demonstrated that she could help a group of 38 students of various
levels develop basic communication skills in English.
The subject shows that Maiko, as someone with previous professional experience
working outside the field of education and as a part-time teacher, had a vision for how
her students’ learning in class could serve them beyond the classroom: live and work in
an international society.
Maiko had a local and extended community with which she collaborated. She was
mentored by Ota Sensei in the first and second year and learned about the school’s
research from him. Because Shirakawa JHS was a ‘research school,’ Maiko had a
relationship with her school as a co-researcher and also received advice from the BOE
and me about her open class. Academics and renowned teachers were also members of
Maiko’s community. She had attended lectures and workshops by Sato Manabu, the
theorist behind the jumping task and collaborative learning, and Tajiri Goro, who had
conceived of the English word-order scheme Maiko was employing in her classes.
Shirakawa JHS provided Maiko with tools to use such as collaborative learning, the
jumping task, and the ‘self-esteem card,’ which was used by students for self-evaluation.
Maiko was skilled at using multiple tools in a lesson together with the textbook page; the
CIs show Maiko using Sunshine with a combination of tools shown in the figure (CIs 1M,
4M, 5M, 6M, 7M).
In terms of division of labor, Maiko carried out her guidance in a different way than
the other teachers. She habitually spent as much of her free time as possible in the
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classroom monitoring students’ behavior, and she understood their lives outside the class
through having students write daily journals (CI 3M), as is standard practice in JHSs
(Fukuzawa, 1998). She monitored student behavior during class activities and could
direct students to follow individual or pair-work norms she had established (CI 3M and
CI 5M). In addition to her teaching and homeroom duties, she helped supervise a club
and served on a committee. As mentioned before, because Shirakawa JHS was a research
school, Maiko was also a practitioner-researcher; therefore ‘research,’ was listed under
her division of labor.
The rules Maiko followed such as the 3-minute rule (CI 3M), students working in
pairs and groups (CI 1M, 3M, 4M, and 5M), and shitsuke (discipline, CI 3M) were
Shirakawa JHS policy. Maiko was unique among the teachers in that there was no
secondary conflict between rules/ norms and division of labor. In other words, what the
students and teacher did in the class adhered to the norms. In summary, Maiko’s activity
system shows that her life experiences, support from Shirakawa, various teaching tools,
ability to carry out her various duties as a homeroom teacher, and her broad community
interacted in such a way that she achieved the outcome of students who could perform
basic communication in English.
10.1.2.1 Analysis of Maiko’s Puzzles
Topics I coded as puzzles in the interviews with Maiko are shown in Figure 10.1.6.
The number in the circle represents the instances in a particular category or code. The
yellow circles show that puzzles were categorized as relating to the curriculum or to the
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students, with the majority being curricular. The red circles show the categories of the
curricular puzzles and the green circles show the original descriptive code of a puzzle.
Maiko’s puzzles were different from Risa’s in that she was confident in how to teach
certain skills as well as how to manage students. Sometimes, Maiko talked about student
weaknesses in English as an obstacle to overcome, but we never discussed it as something
that puzzled her. Maiko’s puzzles were curricular in nature: they had to do with using
mandated methodologies, such as collaborative learning, guidelines for evaluation, such
as can do or the Course of Study, and the textbook. Because Maiko’s puzzles remained
constant in her first and second year of teaching, they are not displayed chronologically
like those of Risa.
Figure 10.1.6 shows that the majority of curricular puzzles we discussed were related
to the school’s collaborative learning. There was some uncertainty about how to carry out
the jumping task. The first was the level of difficulty of the jumping task: it had to be
difficult enough so that only 30% of the class could complete it without help. The
Figure 10.1.6 Maiko’s puzzles
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rationale was that those students who could complete it would help those who could not.
As a practical matter, it was challenging for the teachers to design a task with such a level
of difficulty. Another puzzle was how to get others in the community outside of her school
to understand it. On July 15, 2014, Maiko reported that a member of the BOE observed
her conduct a jumping task and advised her to make it easier. Doing so, however, would
go against the jumping task concept. A third puzzle concerning the jumping task was
connecting it with the textbook, as shown when Maiko and I struggled to come up with a
jumping task to use for the open-school conference (CI 6M). Another puzzle related to
collaborative learning was students’ group work in the writing class (CI 3M). Students
were supposed to support one another, but writing a personal letter or diary entry is
usually an individual endeavor. Furthermore, when students engaged in group work, they
would invariably use Japanese, losing time to practice English.
One of the puzzles related to evaluation is that it was challenging for Maiko to judge
whether students achieved the can do goals in her classes. One example of a can do goal
her school set for student speaking is: “Understand the characteristics of English prosody,
be able to pronounce the stress in words so that its meaning can be transmitted
correctly.”23 It was also difficult for her to evaluate students based on the Course of Study,
which required her to assess each student’s “attitude” by rubric.
The last puzzles faced by Maiko were related to the textbook. First, Maiko related
that the amount of text in some reading sections was too much. The other puzzle, thinking
23 My translation.
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of a communicative situation for grammar, was prevalent throughout the study (CI 5M
& 6M). In the case of CI 5M, I could not help wondering if it was necessary to act out a
scene for every single target structure encountered. In CI 6M, I could appreciate how
difficult it was to think of a situation for students to use a specific structure. Overall,
Maiko’s puzzles were issues with the symbolic and material tools she was asked to use
rather than issues between her and the community. As discussed below, although these
puzzles were always present, Maiko could manage them.
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10.1.2.2 Analysis of Maiko’s Developing Practice
To discuss how Maiko’s practice developed, I use a CHAT diagram to show the
contradicting elements giving rise to these puzzles and Maiko’s reaction to them. I next
introduce tools which Maiko incorporated into her practice.
Because Maiko’s puzzles were curricular in nature, I focus my analysis on how
Maiko attempted to resolve the jumping task. Figure 10.1.7 shows the activity of Maiko’s
jumping task. Maiko was confronting her puzzles in a more public way than the other
teachers, because educators from outside Shirakawa were part of her community. Her
development consisted of her being able to acknowledge the contradictions brought about
by the rules/norms she had to follow and either modifying the rule or justifying her action.
Figure 10.1.7 Class 1B Jumping Task
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The primary and secondary contradictions Maiko faced when attempting the jumping
task are labeled with numbers. Primary contradiction 1 was the “30% can-do” rule, that
is a task that was supposed to be achievable by 30% of the students who would help the
remaining 70% achieve it. There was also a secondary contradiction (number 2) between
the 30% rule and the larger educator community who struggled to grasp Shirakawa JHS’s
concept of a jumping task. In response to this, Maiko and the English department
conceived of a “long jump,” an easier task based on the textbook, versus a “high jump,”
a more difficult task using authentic material. In the open-school conference, Maiko
conducted a “long jump.” By modifying the rule and reducing the jumping task
complexity, Maiko and her department were addressing the primary and secondary
contradictions. Despite this modification, as Maiko expressed in CI 7M, a number of
teachers in her community had difficulty understanding the jumping task, because it went
against what they were taught about finishing and summarizing lessons in one period as
well as telling the goal at the beginning of the lesson. Maiko, however, was able to
rationalize the value of the jumping task as taking priority over following the conventions.
Another secondary contradiction (number 3) was between the tool, Sunshine, and the
rule that the teacher had to have students use the language they studied in a situation. In
CI 7M, the open-class, Maiko conceived of a jumping task in which students could use
other language in addition to the target structure. This made the situation more authentic.
The last secondary contradiction (number 4) was between rules/ norms and division
of labor. The rule for a writing task was that students help one another. CI 3M showed
that with tasks like writing, it was beyond the students’ ability to provide advice to one
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another and they tended to work individually (division of labor). Furthermore, students
felt frustrated when they were obligated to help others who did not want help. In this
situation, Maiko seemed to coexist with this contradiction rather than require students to
help one another. However, as illustrated by CI 3M, Maiko would provide students with
support in order to teach them how to help themselves.
Overall, from improving students’ on-task behavior (CI 3M, 5M) to modifying her
concepts (CI 7M), Maiko was continuously exercising her agency when she faced a
puzzle. In the case of working with students, her past experiences likely informed her
what she needed to tell students to improve their on-task behavior. (Maiko had told me
that she had previous experience teaching in a difficult school as a part-time instructor
(March 4, 2014)). In terms of using resources in the present to resolve contradictions such
as in evaluation and the jumping task, Maiko was able to make use of her community, the
other teachers in her department. She had a long-term vision for her students, which was
that students learn how to communicate and be able to function in an international society.
Much of her teaching was done with this in mind.
The foregoing shows how Maiko’s practice solidified through resolving
contradictions. In the interviews, Maiko was able to articulate to me the rationale for her
current practices and how she developed them. The CHAT diagram of Maiko’s activity
system in Figure 10.1.5 showed ‘professional teachers’ to be part of Maiko’s community
and many of her tools came from these teachers. These professional teachers were outside
of Maiko’s immediate community but part of her community of practice (Wenger, 1998).
Maiko’s type of development was similar to Wallace’s (1991) reflective model described
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in Section 4.4 in that she was able to integrate formal and experiential knowledge into her
teaching. In terms of Edge’s (2011) ‘dimensions of becoming,’ Maiko demonstrated
elements of the technical (applying other theories, CI 7M), theoretical (articulating what
is happening in one’s teaching, CI 7M), intellectual (relating TESOL to the wider world,
CI 1M), and pragmatic (informed action with a future orientation, CI 3M)
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10.1.3 Analysis of Yuta: Facing problems at school
Yuta’s activity system is shown in Figure 10.1.8. In CI 4Y Yuta expressed his desire
to teach the second year again in the next academic year, but not the same students (CI
4Y). I interpreted this to be the outcome. After one year of teaching, Yuta wanted a ‘do
over;’ he felt that he could use the lessons as a first-year teacher to teach different second-
year students. However, the relationships with the current students were beyond repair.
This was the biggest issue plaguing Yuta: a disconnect between him and the community.
Previous literature shows that a lack of positive relationships with others can be
detrimental to a teacher’s development (Priestley et al., 2015).
As a subject, Yuta possessed advanced academic credentials: an undergraduate and
graduate degree in English education. My interviews also attest that he was well read in
Figure 10.1.8 Yuta’s activity system
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his field. One of the rules/norms he had to abide by was the “All 5” rule (CI 1Y), or 5
rules for behavior students were supposed to follow. In addition, he said that in English
class he was expected to do pair work and group work (CI 1Y). I did not ascertain to
whose expectations he was referring.
In his community, Yuta enjoyed a good relationship as a mentee with Tanaka Sensei
and Fujita Sensei. He also had a better relationship with Class 2F after he was relieved of
his duty as their homeroom teacher. However, the supervision coming from the
administrators as well as his relationship with 2D and, particularly, 2E caused him stress.
In terms of division of labor, it seemed that Yuta was under more pressure to show
results in his professional development than Risa or Maiko. This was shown in CIs 2Y
and 4Y.
I observed Yuta make appealing handouts as tools, as well as wonderful blackboard
layouts and logical lesson plans for teaching a textbook page. In CI 3Y, the exam
preparation class, there was evidence that Fujita Sensei and Tanaka Sensei scaffolded
Yuta’s teaching, so I have listed them also as tools. Finally, I served as a tool by assisting
him in a writing class (CI 4Y). It seemed that Yuta had the tools and expertise to teach
the textbook, but often the students did not participate as he intended (CI 1Y).
10.1.3.1 Analysis of Yuta’s Problems
Yuta’s issues were causing him such anguish that I chose to code the issues he
discussed as ‘problems’ rather than ‘puzzles.’ According to Hanks (2017), ‘problems’ are
expressions of negative emotions such as irritation, fear, distrust, or frustration. Under
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this conception of problem, teachers are unwilling to investigate further. Anything coded
as a problem with Yuta was an issue causing him stress, which he did not seek to explore
further.
Figure 10.1.9 shows the sub-categories but not the descriptive codes of Problems.
Yuta’s problems were divided into four secondary categories. School indicated problems
which Yuta experienced with his supervision (CI 2Y, 4Y) or his lack of time (CI 1Y, 2Y).
Yuta felt pressure to improve his lessons from certain school officials, but he would
constantly say yoyuu ga nai (I have no time) to prepare sufficiently for class. He also
talked about trying to survive every day (CI 2Y). These types of remarks were coded as
busy.
One problem with students was their class behavior. Yuta talked about some
students being unteachable, either sleeping in class or being disruptive; he preferred the
former. Motivation referred to students who did not exhibit any desire to make an effort
in the class and Level to students not being proficient enough to do a standard classroom
Figure 10.1.9 Yuta’s problems
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exercise (understanding the reading, writing in English, communicating in English, etc.).
Relationship was perhaps the most serious problem, as Yuta said that his relationship with
certain homerooms had deteriorated. This was evident in the interpretation of CI 4Y,
when Yuta revealed that he felt stressed about teaching one homeroom in particular and
preferred to not have others observe.
Anything coded under Teacher was a deficiency that Yuta felt he had in his expertise.
For example, in CI 1Y he discussed how he had no repertoire of activities (choukin ga
nai). In CI 2Y, in particular, Yuta was self-critical saying that he could not understand
students, he was useless, he was always “scolded” because he was not good, he could not
understand the students, and he was bad compared to other teachers.
Problems with teaching concerned issues that arose in the act of instruction such as
managing students (guidance) or teaching skills or conducting some kind of practice
(skills and practice).
Yuta’s biggest issues were not with teaching but rather with working in harmony and
under the expectations of the Aoki JHS community. Figure 10.1.10, below, represents
Yuta’s English teaching activity in general. One can see that there was not a contradiction
between the tools, Yuta, and the object. Yuta knew how to teach and to use the tools
available to him. The contradiction existed between Yuta and the immediate elements of
the social context: rules/norms, community, and division of labor. These contradictions
led to an outcome of problems for Yuta and his low self-efficacy.
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First, there was a secondary contradiction between the subject and rules/norms
(marked with the 1). Yuta, the subject, was expected to conduct a participatory class,
manage the students, and improve his teaching. However, he had told me on October 21,
2013, that he felt participatory classes did not work with the learners. In fact, he said that
that was one of the challenges of teaching English compared to other subjects. He did not
think it was the right rule for him, because students were not used to such a style.
Another secondary contradiction (marked 2) was between the rules/norms and
division of labor. Much of Yuta’s teaching, in terms of managing students, and much of
the student behavior, in terms of participating, went against the norms. Under division of
labor, it is noted that the Administrators and a member of the BOE often gave what Yuta
Figure 10.1.10 Yuta’s English teaching activity
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considered to be critical feedback. CI 4Y shows that this made Yuta more anxious. Thus,
there was a secondary contradiction between the subject and division of labor (marked 3).
A fourth secondary contradiction was between the tools and community (marked 4).
Yuta was expected to use the ‘All 5 rule’ or 5 rules to reinforce behavior conducive to
class participation such as “no private talk.” As CI 1Y showed, however, it did not work
as it should. Yuta acknowledged on February 21, 2014 that homeroom teachers had
assigned students who did not pay attention to seats in the back of the classroom. Those
students that did work were assigned to sit in the front. By making it easier for the students
who did not want to work to talk among themselves, it seemed that Yuta’s community
was acknowledging, that not all students would follow the ‘All 5 Rule.’
On February 21, 2014, Yuta also spoke about students sometimes being disruptive
by yelling or getting angry. In CI 1Y, the students not paying attention were not being
disruptive in that way, and Yuta was still able to teach the class. Perhaps that is why he
gave the class credit for completing ‘All 5.’ Those students who wanted to study did, and
those students who did not want to study did not, but they did not disrupt the class.
A fifth secondary contradiction was between the community and Yuta (marked 5).
As mentioned earlier, the community of Aoki JHS was different from that of the other
schools. For example, on November 26, 2014, I observed an administrator enter Yuta’s
class and direct some disengaged students to take their books out of their desks and open
them to the day’s lesson. Student management was more challenging at Aoki JHS than at
other schools. There were also students who were keen on learning and studied English,
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but they would not make efforts in Yuta’s class. Yuta discussed how his relationship with
the students had deteriorated, and my observations seemed to support this to some extent.
10.1.3.2 Analysis of Yuta’s Developing Practice
In the previous section, I have taken the position that Yuta was experiencing
problems rather than puzzles because he did not express an intention to explore the issues
further. However, this does not mean he gave up preparing for his classes. Up until the
last observation, I observed that Yuta had created worksheets and planned his classes with
great care. Furthermore, Yuta often would identify things he could have done differently
to improve a class. This is shown in Extract 10.1.3 below.
Extract 10.1.3 Yuta identifies how to improve a class
J: So, (pause)um, so, yeah, it was right around, but, you know, 1
to be honest, I thought the idea was good. So again, I 2
thought the idea was good but I wondered why, why, why are 3
students losing concentration right here? There is no easy 4
answer, but, why do you think, you mentioned that you, you 5
know, you wished you had other materials but. 6
Y: Jibun ga ma wo akete shimatteiru node [= I left some dead 7
time in the class.] 8
J: Jibun-ga? [=You?] 9
Y: Tempo, tempo. 10
J: Uh hm. 11
Y: But, just listening、be(xxx) they are poor at just, just 12
listening. 13
J: Un 14
Y: You have to move in some way. Move them. 15
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J: Uh hm. 16
Y: Write down 17
J: Uh hm. 18
Y: Or, or, in some way. 19
J: Uh hm. 20
Y: Nani ka wo shiji shinakereba naranakatta [= I had to have 21
them do something.] 22
In the above extract, Yuta was aware why the listening task he conducted did not
work; he needed to give students an additional task to keep them busy other than just have
them do listening. Yuta showed that he knew how to teach, but he also showed that he
could not teach under conditions where he felt anxious. His anxiety increased when he
had to teach specific students, when he was being observed by the administrators, or when
he had to do activities he did not think the students could do. In the end, it was difficult
for me to surmise at what stage of development Yuta might be at. The reason is that he
did not exercise his agency to the extent that other teachers did.
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CI 3Y showed the types of conditions in which Yuta could be successful. The activity
of teaching for the achievement test is shown in Figure 10.1.11 below. When he
conducted a review for the English achievement test to Homeroom 2F, Yuta was clearly
in his element. He was teaching students with whom he enjoyed an improved relationship
through the mentorship of Tanaka Sensei. He was also teaching an area in which he had
confidence and the students had interest, and he was using a tried and trusted tool
developed by Fujita Sensei. The outcome of the lesson was a class of engaged students
and a satisfied teacher. When both the class and Yuta shared the same object, enjoyed a
good rapport, and Yuta could work under the mentorship of Tanaka Sensei, he could
enjoy success.
Figure 10.1.11 Activity System for test preparation
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10.1.4 Conclusion on Puzzles and Development
My first two research questions were about the development of the teachers’ practice
and the kind of pedagogical puzzles they would experience when teaching English. These
questions are intertwined. In Section 4.1, I hypothesized that an engagement in some kind
of cognitive struggle and the teachers’ efforts to resolve the underlying issue would
trigger their development. I borrowed the term ‘puzzle’ from Allwright and Hanks (2009)
to describe these issues (Section 4.2.3 explains my own concept of puzzle.). I predicted
that the teachers would learn from the puzzles they encountered, be able to theorize their
practice, and use the lessons learned to inform their future practice. Teacher learning did
not occur in such a step-by-step fashion, but this study has shown that in the case of Risa
and Maiko, teachers exercising their agency to address their puzzles contributed to their
development. Maiko, though, had a more collaborative relationship with her community,
which helped her address complex puzzles such as how to carry out Manabu Sato’s
educational innovation in her classroom (Sato & Sato, 2011).
Using CHAT to examine the nature of teachers’ puzzles and the outcomes of
exercising their agency has shown that the process of teacher development cannot be
divorced from the surrounding social circumstances. Risa, Maiko, and Yuta began their
careers at different stages of development and taught in different circumstances. Risa was
new to teaching and might have struggled more in her second year than in her first year
because she had less support. In her second year, the circumstances seemed to be
insurmountably unfavorable for conducting a PPP-style lesson with Homeroom 1C.
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Maiko, on the other hand, already had experience teaching as well as working and
studying abroad. She had sufficient craft knowledge to develop Sato’s theory of
collaborative learning and a supportive school community. She seemed to be in a situation
in which she could excel.
Although my period with Yuta was too short to understand his development, it
seemed that the numerous problems he was experiencing were preventing his growth. He
showed me situations in which he could excel (CI 3Y), but most of the classes I observed
featured one or two elements which caused him anxiety.
As to the object, teaching a form of CLT, the study led me to conclude that teachers
should not only teach to their strengths but also teach what the students want regardless
of the extent to which the lesson is communicative. I saw lessons which were not
communicative but in which students seemed to be working and the teachers
demonstrated some competence. Allwright (2003) insists that education should be first
and foremost good for the teachers’ and students’ lives, and this objective takes
precedence over the quality of teaching and learning. To me this means that the
satisfaction of both teachers and learners with a class is more important than the extent to
which a teacher is following a particular methodology. When I saw Yuta and Risa
struggling to teach a learner-centered class but able to teach a non-communicative class
with much more success, I could understand the importance of Allwright’s argument.
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10.2 RP between the TOT and Teachers
My last research question was about my role as a TOT and the implications it would
have for mentoring novice teachers. I sought to conduct a kind of RP with the teachers in
which we would engage collaboratively in the cyclical process of identifying puzzles,
discussing how to address them, and reflecting on the results. In actual practice, the
TOT/teacher conferences did not follow this process. We engaged in our own form of RP,
which was a product of our circumstances and the capacity of the teachers and me to carry
it out. As with the teachers conducting CLT, carrying out RP was a formidable challenge
for me. Interestingly, I faced the same challenge in needing to develop my own type of
situated RP as the novice teachers did with CLT.
In this section, I discuss the nature of the situated RP I developed with the teachers
in our specific circumstances. First, I describe the challenges we faced in doing RP and
then the extent to which we were able to collaboratively discuss the puzzles the teachers
faced.
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10.2.1 The Challenge of Carrying out RP
In Section 4.2.1, referencing Farrell (2015), I described RP broadly as a way for
teachers to make sense of their teaching through 1) developing their own theories of
TESOL, and 2) correcting any distortions or errors related to their practice so that their
teaching is in the best interests of their learners. I also presented the criticisms that RP is
often not carried out as originally intended. After 18 months of trying RP, I came to look
at the criticisms of RP as indicative of how challenging it can be to carry out.
Table 10.2.1 summarizes the criticisms of RP discussed in Section 4.2.2 with two
additions from my experience in this study. Type A criticisms, based on Zeichner’s
(2008), make the point that RP has deviated from its original theory and it should take a
more critical perspective on methodology and social conditions impacting the classroom.
Type B criticisms, based on Walsh and Mann (2015), are that the methodology of RP
Table 10.2.1 Criticisms of RP
Type A: RP should be more critical (Zeichner, 2008)
① RP adheres to technical rationality: teachers are encouraged to apply theories rather than
examine them.
② Reflection is restricted to an analysis of teaching skills and practices, rather than the
purpose of the practice.
③ RP focuses teachers’ attention on their own teaching and ignores the social conditions
that can impact the teacher’s instruction outside the classroom.
Type B: RP should be more rigorous and collaborative (Walsh & Mann, 2015)
① It is insufficiently data led. Reflective tools need to be improved.
② It focuses on the individual rather than collaborative options.
③ It is dominated by written forms of reflection.
Type C: Theoretically and Methodologically Valid RP is not always feasible.
① Teachers are busy and have scarce opportunity for reflection (van Manen, 2008).
② Reflection does not come naturally to novice teachers (Copland & Mann, 2010).
③ Teachers do not always think that their knowledge is wrong (van Manen, 2008).
④ Circumstantial appropriateness of questioning ‘professional knowledge’ (this study).
⑤ Class video can be uncomfortable (this study).
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should be more rigorous based on tangible data and that RP should be a collaborative
rather than individual endeavor. The criticisms under C, although not a direct response to
A and B, call into question the extent to which theoretically and empirically rigorous RP
is feasible. These criticisms encapsulated my challenge; I intended to address Type A and
Type B criticisms in my own RP, but in actual practice I often found theoretically and
methodologically valid RP to be unfeasible. Below, referencing the criticisms in Table
10.2.1, I describe the challenges of conducting RP.
10.2.1.1 The Challenge of Questioning Theories or Knowledge
In the case of teaching English in Japan, technical rationality, or what is considered
professional knowledge, is found in the Course of Study. This is evident in the
questions about English teaching and learning in the teachers employment test, which
usually cover what is written in the Course of Study. There was never a point in the
study when the teachers and I critically discussed the objectives in the Course of Study.
In CI 5M, I attempted to question the necessity of having students make such an effort
to act out a situation for “Is this your pen?”, thus challenging the tenet of the Course of
Study that language be learned in context. However, for Maiko, there could be no
exceptions to the principle that all target structures must be learned and practiced in a
situation. At other times, the teachers did not seem to want to consider the feasibility of
the goals of the Course of Study, but I too was hesitant to raise this issue, only doing so
indirectly. If the teachers were not problematizing the Course of Study, it did not seem
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appropriate for me to encourage them to question the very foundation of their
professional knowledge.
10.2.1.2 The Challenge of Examining Social Issues in a Collaborative Manner
At the beginning of this study, I was hoping that the teachers and I would have deep
philosophical discussions about the purpose of their practice, thus addressing criticism
A-2. I also hoped that issues could be raised in a collaborative way, addressing criticism
B-2. However, I found both C-1, lack of time, and C-2, RP not coming naturally to
teachers, to be obstacles.
Concerning lack of time, in most interviews the teachers could only afford 20 to 40
minutes. Often, I felt hurried to discuss all the topics I wanted to cover .Therefore, I set
the agenda, not the teachers. Lack of time also made it difficult to delve deeper into an
issue. In CI 6M, I tried to link Maiko’s practice for the open-school conference with her
purposes, with mixed results. It is possible that Maiko wanted a quick idea within the
limited time.
CI 6M could also be an example of RP not coming naturally (C-1); at that time
Maiko was not prepared to talk about her principles. RP did not come naturally to me
either. In CI 1M, Maiko tried to engage me in a discussion about how I learned foreign
languages, to compare Japanese foreign language education with that of another country.
However, I changed the conversation back to what I had observed in Japan. Instinctively,
I thought I should stay on topic, English teaching in Japan, without realizing the
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opportunity we had to compare language teaching in Japan with that in another country
and elicit more of her thoughts about what educational innovations Japan should adopt.
Overall, the challenge of questioning accepted theory and focusing on larger social
issues showed the difficulty of leaving the ‘here and now’ in RP. Risa and Yuta further
demonstrate this; they were acclimating to their students, schools, and course materials.
Their immediate need was to hone their craft, which took priority over considering the
larger social factors affecting their English instruction or critically examining their so-
called professional knowledge.
10.2.1.3 The Challenge of Conducting Data-led RP
My way of addressing criticism C-1, RP being insufficiently data-led, was to use
video and transcripts in the discussions so that the teachers and I would be able to base
our conclusions on evidence. However, I found C-5, class video making teachers
uncomfortable, and C-1, lack of time, to be obstacles.
In CI 1M, I discussed showing Risa a transcript of her warm-up, in order to help her
notice the issues with her class. In CI 6M, I read my fieldnotes to Risa for the same reason.
She could immediately recognize the issues, but it did not have any impact on her classes.
In these cases, the data showed issues to Risa that she was already aware of. I originally
planned to show the teachers a video of their class once every two months and through
stimulated recall elicit their rationale for doing certain actions. However, as Risa’s and
Yuta’s CIs show, the most pressing issues were apparent without the use of video. Video
or transcripts seemed to exacerbate the obvious rather than reveal something new. After
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CI 6R, I came to the realization that video or transcripts might not be wise to use when
the teachers were struggling and the overall issues were apparent.
An ideal way to conduct data-led RP would be for the teacher to take the role of
researcher (Walsh, 2013), identify an issue for inquiry (i.e. In what situations do I use
Japanese?), collect data, and answer the question. However, the teachers and I did not
have the luxury of time to plan what to investigate in the next observation. Apart from
being a researcher, I was a full-time teacher and did not have the time to keep up with
transcription of interviews and classes, fulfill my work duties, and plan issues of inquiry
for the next observation. For the teachers, sparing a half-period or period every month
just to talk with me was challenging. Therefore, we found ourselves in a situation in which
most of the time we had to reflect spontaneously in real-time about a class we had just
experienced together. The criticisms of van Manen (2008) indicate that many teachers
find themselves in a similar situation. From this perspective, this study had a strong
element of situational authenticity.
The contradictions show that it was not feasible for us to conduct an idealized version
of RP. Because two of the three teachers were learning their craft and our talking time
was limited, we would naturally focus on immediate concerns. In terms of the levels of
reflection discussed in Section 4.2.1, we were mainly descriptive (Farrell, 2015), focusing
on the teachers and students’ actions in the class. In the next section, I reveal how under
these circumstances I attempted to discuss puzzles or problems with each teacher and
what was gained from this process.
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10.2.2 Facilitating Teacher Development through Dialogic RP
The original purpose of my meetings with the teachers was to discuss the puzzles
they were facing in a collaborative manner and to help them reflect on ways to improve
their teaching. I considered this to be a form of dialogic RP and, thus, that it addressed
criticisms B-2, RP being too individual, and B-3, RP being dominated by written forms.
In this section, to consider the nature of our dialogic RP, I give an overview of the ‘Style
of Work’ the teachers and I engaged in and then, referencing Rueda’s (1998) principles
for collaborative dialogue between TOTs and teachers, discuss the quality of my
facilitation.
10.2.2.1 Work Style
My own development had a reflexive relationship with the style of talk the teachers
and I engaged in. Chapters 6 – 8 represented three different periods of time with the
teachers. The ‘style of work,’ discussed in Section 4.3.3, depended on whether or not the
teacher or I ‘framed the experience’ or ‘interpreted the picture.’ ‘Framing the experience’
denotes nominating classroom events as topics of discussion and ‘interpreting the picture’
means interpreting the classroom event. Table 10.2.2, below, shows who played an
exclusive, a larger, or an equal role in carrying out the two components of work style
during each period.
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In Period 1, “We are all Novices,” I took the lead role in framing the experiences.
Although the teachers were also able to nominate topics, I did not make it easy for them.
For example, in CI 2M, I prevented Maiko from nominating a topic for discussion. In
terms of interpreting the picture, sometimes I attempted to have the teachers interpret
classroom events but often, unwittingly, I offered my own interpretation. This was
evident in CI 4R, when I did not let Risa interpret the events of the class. Also in CI 4Y,
I nominated and interpreted a classroom event, the way Yuta used worksheets, when he
was in no mood to discuss this. I used this work style in Period 1 because I was getting
used to my roles as both a TOT and researcher. I therefore felt obligated to collect relevant
data for the research as well as help the teachers develop.
In Period 2, I made a deliberate effort to change my discussion style and encouraged
the teachers to nominate the topics and interpret them. This period coincided with a paper
I wrote on the study at the Doing Research in Applied Linguistics Conference (Hall,
2014a), which enabled me to reflect on the way I had been conducting interviews. CI 6R
shows that I was not entirely successful in having Risa frame the experience but I was
successful in encouraging her interpretation. Because time was limited, I never
Table 10.2.2 Work style by period
Overarching Time
Periods
Period 1: “We are all
Novices”
Period 2: “A
Fresh Start”
Period 3:
“Partnering up”
(October, 2013 –
March, 2014)
(April – August,
2014)
(September, 2014 –
March, 2015)
Work
Style
Framing the
Experience TOT Teacher > TOT TOT = Teacher
Interpreting
the picture TOT > Teacher Teacher >TOT Teacher>TOT
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completely stopped nominating topics, but I attempted to encourage the teachers to play
a role in this.
Table 10.2.2 shows the teachers and I sharing responsibility for the different work
styles in Period 3. In some interviews such as that in CI 6M, the teachers nominated the
topic for discussion. In others, such as CI 11R, when I was eliciting principles from Risa,
I nominated the topics. In this period, I became less aware of how I was conducting the
interview and began to treat our sessions as discussions. Primarily I worked on
minimizing my talking. CI 8R Agonizing Practice, represents a turning point which led
to Period 3. I felt frustration at Homeroom 1C’s behavior and at my own powerlessness
to improve it. I began to doubt that the style of interview I was conducting in Period 2,
identifying and resolving puzzles, would benefit Risa. In Period 3, Risa and Maiko still
discussed their puzzles with me, but I was not making an effort to elicit them or help
resolve them; I was satisfied with understanding the puzzles. As a result, I felt more
comfortable during the interviews in Period 3 than I had in Periods 1 and 2.
Perhaps as I became less preoccupied with my role, our relationship became more
collaborative. I became more concerned with understanding the teachers’ practice and the
teachers for their part were not facing any subtle pressure from me to resolve their puzzles.
10.2.2.2 Quality of TOT and Teacher Dialogue
In Section 4.2.1, I wrote about connecting theory with practice as a rationale for RP.
Ironically, reviewing the interview transcripts enabled me to link my own supervisory
practice with the theory of dialogic RP. In dialogic RP, teacher learning is promoted
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through the social activity of the participants. In Section 4.3.2, I introduced the principles
below from Rueda (1998) as helpful in considering how TOTs can facilitate development
in dialogic RP (The principles below are paraphrased).
1. Facilitate learning through joint productive activity
2. Contextualize teaching in the experiences of the participants
3. Challenge participants toward more complex solutions in
addressing problems.
4. Engage participants in dialogue, especially through
instructional conversation.
5. Promote learners’ expertise in professionally relevant
discourse.
The different circumstances I found myself in with each teacher affected the extent
to which I could enact these principles. In this section, based on the principles, I discuss
how I carried out dialogic RP with the teachers.
Throughout the study, I was attempting to enact the first principle, joint productive
activity, with all the teachers. The second principle, contextualizing talk on teaching, was
also fulfilled as our talk always centered on what happened in the classroom. Finally, the
third principle, encouraging complex solutions to issues, was largely fulfilled; we talked
extensively about the same puzzles, such as Risa’s management issues of Homeroom 1C
or Maiko’s jumping task, recognizing the complexity of the situation and the fact that
there were no easy solutions. With Yuta, however, it was more difficult to pursue puzzles
as he seemed to interpret them as problems.
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I was not able to enact the fourth principle, the instructional conversation, with any
teacher. Rueda described the instructional conversation as a “blend of deliberate, planned
teaching with more interactive, responsive conversation” (1998, para 11). In Period 1, I
tried it when attempting to give Risa advice on a reading lesson (CI 3R). In Period 3, CI
6M, I attempted to give Maiko an idea for her jumping task, relating student interaction
to Maiko’s goal of, giving students the skills they would need to be members of an
international society. However, in both cases, I did not present my observations in a way
that would compel them to notice a potential issue. According to Schön (1983),
‘problematic’ issues, or issues considered to warrant further inquiry, do not just appear
but must be constructed. Therefore, in order for the instructional conversation to work,
the teacher and TOT must come to a consensus on something they consider to be an issue.
It is only then that the instructional talk can commence.
Another reason why most instructional conversations I attempted with Risa and
Maiko were not effective was that I was not a member of their community. Risa and
Maiko showed that they appreciated, accepted, and used ideas from fellow practitioners.
Whether from inside or outside the school, these practitioners had one crucial
qualification which I lacked: they had worked as full-time teachers at a JHS or were
currently teaching at a JHS.
Whether the last principle, incorporating professionally relevant discourse to
promote the teacher’s development, was included in our conversations depended on the
particular teacher’s background knowledge. With Maiko, we tended to use the
professionally relevant discourse which was related to her school research or the Course
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of Study. This professionally relevant discourse was also initiated by Maiko, as shown in
CI 4M, CI 5M, CI 6M, and CI 7M.
When I used professionally relevant discourse, I tended to use it only in one particular
instance rather than across post-class conferences. Arguably, for professional discourse
to be internalized by the teachers, it would have to be used repeatedly across sessions in
a way that would accurately describe what they were attempting to do in their classes.
Extract 10.2.2, shows one instance of my using the term discourse competence with
Maiko when we reviewed a test she made on December 15, 2014. I was trying to tell her
that a test question she made was likely evaluating students’ discourse competence.
Extract 10.2.2 Discourse Competence
J: What kind of knowledge do you think this is targeting? 1
M: It's not knowledge. It's an expression. But some teachers give 2
this test as checking knowledge but I do like, like expression 3
of people. Because, they, they should know if they say 4
something what should they answer for that question. 5
J: Have you ever heard of the term discourse competence? 6
M: No. 7
J: Discourse. Danwa [=discourse]. Understanding how different 8
sentences fit together to make a whole or understanding how 9
different utterances, hatuswa [=utterance], will fit together 10
to make a dialogue. It kind of reminds me of that. 11
In Risa’s case, professionally relevant discourse depended on the type of lesson we
were discussing. In the PPP-style lessons, we did not use professionally relevant
discourse, because the biggest issue was managing the boys in 1C rather than the practice
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of teaching English. (Also since I did not have knowledge of classroom management
theories and terms, I was unable to introduce professionally relevant discourse on this
subject). However, with the reading lessons or the speech lessons, it was possible to use
professionally relevant discourse. In Extract 10.2.3, Risa uses the term “discourse marker”
in explaining why students could not find one of the reasons for a ‘why question’ about
the textbook reading.
Extract 10.2.3 Risa uses “discourse marker “ (February 27, 2014)R: I think two reasons there is but some people find, find 1
only one reasons. And others, some people can't find. 2
J: How, oh, I'm sorry. 3
R: If there is “because” or something. 4
J: Then they can. 5
R: Yes, I think they can find but there is no discourse 6
marker or something. 7
J: Oh, good word, discourse marker. 8
Considering that Risa could use professionally relevant discourse when discussing
reading lessons than the more communicative PPP lessons, it seems probable that she had
more expertise in teaching reading.
10.2.3 Implications for Encouraging RP with Novice Teachers
Before this study began, it was my belief that the teachers’ process of development
would be facilitated through a type of RP in which we explored areas of cognitive conflict.
The type of RP we engaged in allowed us to explore their situations in a descriptive sense
(Farrell, 2015), but our talks rarely went beyond the context of the school. It was only
with Maiko that I could find any kind of evidence of engaging in a form of comparative
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reflection, or a teacher comparing her practice with what others do, and critical reflection,
or considering the relationship classroom practice has with the larger society. It is quite
possible that Risa and Yuta were not ready for deeper levels of reflection because they
were learning to teach in harmony with their respective contexts. A solid foundation of
craft knowledge is likely a prerequisite for relating what one does in the classroom with
larger social phenomena.
The lesson I learned is that the resolution of a particular puzzle can take a year or
more; pedagogical quandaries are not as easily resolved as some of the literature on RP
seems to indicate (Farrell, 2017). This experience indicates that Exploratory Practice
(Allwright & Hanks, 2009; Hanks, 2017) can perhaps inform how teacher educators
support teachers because it emphasizes understanding the nature of puzzles and
improving the quality of classroom life over resolving problems. For Risa, improving the
quality of classroom life entailed building a more constructive relationship with the boys
of 1C; for Yuta, it entailed developing a more trusting relationship with fellow teachers
and students.
Finally, I have shown that the teachers’ own practice and my own way of conducting
RP were products of our own backgrounds and circumstances. In all cases, we were taking
the professional knowledge we had, attempting to enact it in our respective contexts, and
developing our own form of practice. Eighteen months seems like a long time, but it is
short when considering that teacher development can be measured in units of a year or
more (Huberman, 1992).
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11. Conclusion
In this section, I first review the answers to each of my three research questions and
then discuss the contributions of this study: using CHAT to understand the novice
teachers’ experiences and developing an understanding of RP, of novice teachers in outer
circle countries, and of the value of linguistic ethnography in researching novice teachers.
This study investigated three teachers with different personal histories teaching at
schools with different characteristics. I served as a TOT and was neither a member of the
teachers’ JHSs nor a Japanese national. Under these circumstances, I sought to investigate
the following research questions:
① What kind of pedagogical puzzles do the teachers face when teaching English?
② How do the teachers develop their practice over the span of 18 months? What kind
of environmental factors impact their development?
③ What is the role of the researcher as a Teacher of Teachers (TOT) in helping the
teachers to address these puzzles?
11.1 Research Question 1: The Pedagogical Puzzles of the Teachers
An Activity System analysis showed that the teachers’ puzzles were a product of
their immediate circumstances and unique personal histories, and the puzzles remained
unresolved throughout the period of the study. Risa was a young female teacher with
minimal experience and close in age to her students. Her biggest puzzle was finding a
way to compel the boys from Homeroom 1C to cooperate. This was most problematic
in the PPP-style lessons, which were doomed by a number of detrimental factors such as
Risa’s lack of experience in doing CLT-type lessons, the dullness of textbook activities,
lack of support from mentor teachers, a mismatch between the communicative activity
and students’ expectations, and the boys’ rambunctiousness.
325
Maiko, on the other hand, experienced puzzles of a different nature. An Activity
System analysis showed that Maiko was working in more favorable conditions. She had
experience working as a teacher and a strong command of English. In addition, she was
working at a school that had a foreign language educational framework and a mentor in
Ota Sensei who could help Maiko learn it. Her puzzles concerned implementing the
jumping task and carrying out national curricular objectives. She did not handle the
jumping task puzzle alone but rather together with other teachers at her school.
Lastly, Yuta was not experiencing puzzles but rather problems as he seemed to have
resigned himself to failure as a teacher of Homerooms 2D and 2E. The big difference
between Yuta and Risa was that no matter how frustrated Risa was, she never gave up in
trying to improve the behavior of Homeroom 1C. Priestley et. al (2015) argue that
relationships can help or hinder agency. Yuta’s tense relationships seemed to inhibit his
agency.
11.2 Research Question 2: How Teachers’ Practice Developed
Risa’s and Maiko’s puzzles were intertwined with their development. Risa and
Maiko were continually attempting to resolve their primary puzzles: issues with
Homeroom 1C for Risa and curricular issues for Maiko. This study seemed to indicate
that in their case resolving issues can sometimes take years. For example, as of June, 2017,
Maiko and her school were still modifying and experimenting with the jumping task.
However, teachers can learn from the process of resolving puzzles. The open school
conference in CI 7M showed that Maiko was able to exhibit and rationalize her practice
to other teachers even in the face of some skepticism. Risa for her part, through taking
measures to address her primary puzzle, was able to establish a relationship with
326
Homeroom 1C and develop a theory of practice (CI 11R). It was telling that she wanted
to continue to teach the same grade.
In terms of the environmental factors that influenced teachers’ development, a CHAT
analysis showed situations in which Yuta and Risa could succeed as well as situations
which would lead to difficult classroom experiences. Maiko, by comparison, consistently
had the kind of conditions and the personal expertise to make her teaching work in every
class I observed. To summarize, a class worked well if most of the following conditions
were met: the activities and lesson content were compatible with the teachers’ strengths;
students had an interest in classroom content; the teachers had a trusting relationship with
students and colleagues; the teachers had the support of either frameworks provided by
their schools or other teachers, and the teachers had a clear rationale behind their
pedagogical decisions.
11.3 Research Question 3: The Role of the TOT
In this study, as a TOT I was attempting to conduct a form of reflective practice with
the teachers. The nature of the RP depended on the personal histories of the participants
and the surrounding circumstances. One area of RP that was true for all three teachers
was Schön’s (1983) assertion that successful reflection first involves the recognition of
an issue, which in this study could be considered a puzzle. If the teacher and I were not
in agreement that a particular phenomenon was a puzzle, there was no foundation for
reflection. This study provides evidence that critical reflection does not come easy to
teachers. Books on RP tend to put critical reflection (Edge, 2011; Farrell, 2015) last on
the list of different levels of reflection. Although these researchers are not arguing that
teachers progress from one level to another, one can assume that reflecting critically is
327
something teachers are more likely to learn to do when they understand their crafts and
contexts.
11.4 Potential Contributions of this Study
The first contribution of this study is to the understanding of RP. Walsh (2013) warns
that sequential models of RP can mislead educators into believing that it consists of
performing successive steps. Educators are busy people and in many cases do not have
the time to become researchers and engage in systematic inquiry of a puzzle. The most
complex puzzles are perpetually present, but continually examining them and
understanding them has the potential to help teachers improve their practice. Ultimately,
this study argues for a simplified and feasible RP in which teachers identify puzzles,
reflect on them at a level (i.e. descriptive, comparative, critical) appropriate to their stage
of development, and take measures that are feasible for them. There is evidence that
Maiko had opportunities for this kind of reflection with other teachers at her school but
less evidence for Risa and Yuta.
In terms of the TOT facilitating RP, the role of the TOT is to help the teacher identify
potential puzzles and faciliate reflection on that particular issue at an appropriate level
(i.e. descriptive, comparative, critical). Ironically, carrying out RP with a teacher
involves reflecting-in-action (Schön, 1983) on the part of the TOT. The TOT needs to
listen to the teacher carefully and, based on his knowledge of the teacher’s background,
make quick judgments about whether to add professional discourse, follow up on an issue,
let the teacher talk, or change the topic. It is my hope that the interactional transcripts of
our conversations can shed some light on the complexities of facilitating RP in EFL
contexts.
328
A second contribution is the use of CHAT to understand the novice English teacher
experience. Activity system analysis of the CIs in this paper could help other educators
understand why a teacher succeeds or fails in a given situation. Novice teachers need to
understand that it is not their methods alone that make a class work. Rather, an array of
conditions must be in harmony with one another. Activity System analysis also has the
potential to help policy makers, school administrators, teacher-leaders, and teachers
understand the conditions conducive to a particular methodology. CHAT reveals that the
teacher and school are in a reflexive relationship: they develop together. A new
methodology will not change a school, rather they will arguably change each other.
A third contribution is to the understanding of novice English teacher development
in outer circle countries. This study investigated teachers in normal circumstances; two
of the three teachers taught the class mostly in Japanese and the students were learning
English as a school subject. To my knowledge, there are few research studies about these
types of teachers. However, these are the teachers who are entrusted with carrying out
communicative English teaching reforms in many outer-circle countries. As development
is context-specific, an accumulation of descriptions of teacher development in different
contexts can contribute to a general portrait of this complex phenomenon. However, this
study argues that it is important for policy-makers and administrators to understand that
success in teaching ‘communicative English’ should not be based exclusively on how
much English is spoken in the class but rather on whether the teachers and students
consider themselves to be engaged in meaningful learning.
The last contribution is showing the value of linguistic ethnography in researching
novice teachers. An analysis of my interaction with Maiko, Yuta, and Risa provided
evidence for how better to support teachers through RP. It showed how a TOT must
329
exercise reflection-in-action by perceiving the intentions of teachers’ utterances and
responding appropriately. An analysis of classroom interaction showed how the
classroom atmosphere was constructed through teacher and student interaction. Linguistic
ethnography also enabled me to interpret the CIs using a combination of insights inspired
by ethnography and tools of discourse analysis. The analyses showed that linguistic
ethnography can provide insights into the meanings of important events experienced by
novice teachers.
11.5 Shortcomings
Throughout the research process, I made an effort to conduct trustworthy (Lincoln &
Guba, 1985) linguistic ethnography. This was achieved to some extent as the criteria for
the collecting, condensing, selecting, and analyzing of data were transparent. However,
this methodology was not without its flaws. I believe that good research is not only
trustworthy but also feasible for others to do. The following flaws were related to
feasibility, trustworthiness, or both.
The first flaw was in the coding of interview talk; as shown in the coding diagrams
in Chapter 5, I coded much more than I could use (for example, the student category).
In addition, the segmenting of interviews, the descriptive coding of segments, and the
coding categories I used were based on my own judgement. Other people would have
segmented, coded, and categorized the data in different way. For this reason, the
descriptive codes and categories might have been difficult to understand for the reader.
In hindsight, coding only the interview data related to the research questions would have
reduced the categories and simplified the analysis. In addition, with fewer codes and
categories, I could have had a colleague confirm the coding.
330
The second flaw was the delay in my analysis. Throughout the 18 months of
fieldwork, I was consistent in transcribing interviews and writing up fieldnotes of classes
every month. This work was so labor intensive, however, that, because of other
obligations, I usually finished just before my next round of interviews and observations.
As a result, I did not begin to code the interviews in earnest until all fieldwork had finished.
When coding, I realized a number of issues in the interviews I could have explored more.
Analysis in ethnography should happen during the process of fieldwork and inform it
(Hammersley & Atkinson, 1996). Coding interviews during this research would have
improved the quality of subsequent interviews.
A third flaw was in the sheer volume of unused transcription data. I spent a large
amount of time producing Transana notes, or synchronized classroom fieldnotes with
video. Sometimes I would spend more than a day transcribing classroom interactions or
extended teacher talk which I thought to be illuminating. Ultimately, though, I used only
a small fraction of these data in the final CIs. In hindsight, I should have stayed with my
original strategy of segmenting and roughly describing classroom scenes in Transana, and
then transcribing only those interactions identified later as being relevant to a CI. Doing
so likely would have afforded me the time for coding interviews during the study.
A last flaw was in how I included the teachers in this process of organizing the
feedback event. I did tell them that I hoped that we could identify and resolve dilemmas
(I used this term with the teachers rather than puzzles), but I did not share with them my
vision for reflective practice. One of the reasons was that as a novice myself, my
methodology of RP was variable. However, including the teachers in the process of
developing an ecologically appropriate form of RP might have enabled us to have a more
collaborative feedback session.
331
11.6 Areas for Further Inquiry
As noted above, one of the limitations of this study was the time spent accumulating
data that I could not analyze. I believe that the classroom transcripts and video recordings
could offer insight into other topics relevant to English teaching in outer-circle contexts.
First, Maiko was successful in conducting her class mostly in English while this was not
possible for Risa and Yuta. An analysis comparing when and how the teachers used
English and Japanese could provide insight into strategies for conducting classes in
English. This subject has received much attention in the field of English education in
Japan (Hall et al., 2011). Second, the issue of gender, student participation, and Risa’s
struggle to assert her authority in the class was prevalent in Risa’s 1C puzzle. There is a
substantial amount of unanalyzed interaction between Risa and the boys of 1C, which
could provide further insight into how the male students constructed their identities in the
classroom, how Risa attempted to assert her authority, and the impact this had on the
classroom learning environment. To my knowledge there is little research of issues
experienced by teachers in Japan with student behavior in English classes. Third, there
were numerous instances in which I saw different teachers teaching the same textbook
page with different results. A CHAT Analysis comparing teachers teaching the same age
group using the same material tools but attaining different outcomes could provide
important insights into factors leading to effective textbook use in a particular context.
11.7 Last Words
On a personal note, 20 years ago I came to Japan on the JET Programme. My
understanding then was that my reason for being sent was to make some kind of
contribution to English Education in Japan. It is my hope that with this thesis I will have
332
been able to make one. Teaching English in Japanese schools is a very complex
pedagogical puzzle for which there are no simple solutions. Helping to elucidate the
nature of the puzzle, I believe, will help educators respond to the issues better and thus
improve the school life of teachers and students.
333
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Appendix 1: Research Participation Consent Form
Dear ___________:
I, James Hall, am conducting research on the experience of first and second year
English teachers and would like to include you in my study. The goal of the research is
to develop an understanding of the first and second year of teaching for English teachers
in Iwate and use these findings to help improve the Iwate University Faculty of Education
English Teacher Education Program. Currently, I have asked teachers from three junior
high schools to participate in this study.
Below, I have written the details of my research plan. Please read them carefully, and,
if you agree to participate, please sign your name at the bottom of the page.
Data Collection Inside and Outside of School
From October, 2013 to March, 2015, I am seeking your permission to collect data in
the follow way:
1. Inside school: I will observe your classes once or twice a month and arrange
for an informal interview once a month to discuss the classes I observed. Lastly,
once every two months, I will record one of your classes on video camera. If you
wish me not to film a class we previously scheduled to record, I will follow your
request with no questions asked. Also, you can ask me to turn off the camera at any
time during the class if you feel uncomfortable.
2. Outside School: Two times a year, I will hold a group discussion with the
research participants from all the schools. This conversation will be audio-recorded
for later analysis.
Roles of the Researcher and Teacher
My role is as an observer. I will not critique your teaching or attempt to provide you with
advice. However, when I am observing your class, if you would like me to assist in some
way, I will help. Even if I participate in your class, you will always be in charge and I
will never tell you how to teach.
Within the research period, I will likely present the findings of this research at some
conferences or write journal articles. In some instances, I might ask you to participate as
a co-presenter or co-author.
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About Protecting the Teacher’s Privacy
∙ The audio and video recordings are for my personal research purposes only. If I
wish to use the audio or video recordings for a conference presentation or workshop,
I will show them to you first and ask for your permission. Furthermore, any video
that is displayed publicly will be edited in such a way so that the faces of those on
camera will be blurred.
∙ Although video might be shown at national and international conferences, it
will not be shown locally, where you can be recognized.
∙ The only people who can access video of the classes will be the researcher or
teachers being observed. All raw video footage (undistorted video) will be destroyed
within 2 years after this project ends.
∙ When writing academic papers and making conference presentations, I will
never use the teacher’s real name nor will I use the name of the teacher’s school.
However, in the cases where the teacher is a co-author or co-presenter, this will not
be possible.
About the Teacher’s Participation Rights
∙ If you have to cancel an observation or interview session you can do so. I
might ask you to reschedule but if you are too busy, you can refuse.
∙ If you feel like you no longer want to participate in the study, you can stop at
any time.
I agree to participate in the research project as written above.
Name:____________________
Date: ____________________
